FROM REAL CYBER CONFLICT THROUGH WISHFUL CYBER SECURITY TO (UN) LIKELY CYBER PEACE

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1 Military Art and Science 259 FROM REAL CYBER CONFLICT THROUGH WISHFUL CYBER SECURITY TO (UN) LIKELY CYBER PEACE Ilina ARMENCHEVA Stefko SMOLENOV "G. S. Rakovski" National Defence College, Sofia, Bulgaria ABSTRACT In nova days ICT progress and the daily life dependency on Internet leads to emergence of many new challenges and threats in cyber space. They can escalate from simple hacker's breach to more serious attacks that take effect over the great number of cyber terrorism victims and even to the cyber war. These circumstances require developing effective policies focusing on how to cope with new challenges and who is responsible to tackle with them. In the efforts to build an efficient, integrated, legal and politically sustainable international cybersecurity system are engaged both nation states and international organization. The result of these combined efforts is illusory confidence that there is permanent cyber peace ensuring the interests of almost all subjects from individual citizens to nation states and national and international entities. KEYWORDS: cyber security, cyber conflict, cyber war, cyber peace Si vis pacem, para bellum Latin proverb 1. Introduction The information revolution and the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT) make premises for new threats in cyberspace, which is an ideal platform for new covert wars and conflicts. The lack of adequate regulation and the blurred formulations allow aggressors to take advantage of the anonymity and invisibility in cyberspace without any punishment. The idea of achieving cyber peace and its placement as a main guiding principle of peaceful co-existence in cyberspace in the first decade of the 21st century is not new. But having in mind the increased cyber threats in various spheres of public life as well as the possibility of causing damages that are too important for the public relations as a result of cybercrime and cyber conflicts, it is extremely urgent to seek opportunities for

2 260 Military Art and Science joint efforts of the whole international community to achieve so desired stability and security in the global cyberspace. The aim of this study is to re-raise the discussion on this highly topical issue by offering some ideas for the development of cooperation between different countries in order to limit the damage and to successfully counter possible attacks in the virtual environment. 2. Challenges in Cyberspace In the information age, all key sectors of the survival of mankind such as security, policy, management, business, finance, transport, infrastructure, post, telecommunications, medicine and science are closely dependent on ICT. This gives grounds to assert that the Internet increasingly acquires the characteristics of the central nervous system of human society and is inextricably linked with people's daily lives. Striking examples of this are the social networks that can rapidly affect the values, ideas and behavior of large social groups. Due to their global nature, virtually there is no influence on national governments and restrictions cannot be imposed within a definite country, except of course a complete ban on access to the Web. In practice, it gives unlimited possibilities for distribution of various ideologies and ideas related to democratic transformations of social relations and human rights. At the same time, new technologies and the Internet make easily accessible different impacts on critical infrastructure of individual countries (through the collection and use of confidential information related to national security and the deployment of information wars) and create opportunities for criminal activities and attacks against both the interests of various public organizations and those of individual citizens. In the era of nation-states before the emergence and development of the global society, power relations and political leadership were based mostly on economic and military superiority of the various entities at the national and international level. Government and international organizations have created and imposed legal, social norms and values, which regulated by laws and treaties, to the possible extent, the emerging armed conflicts. The basic principle has been linked to the inviolability of national borders and territorial integrity of the Contracting Parties. Aiming more successful realization of this principle, different countries have developed, and continue to present various military and economic capabilities to defense by land, air and sea. The information revolution and the emerging threats set different from the current requirements for countries. In order to fulfill its functions, and particularly those related to national security, is required a construction and development of new capabilities for control and protection of information and communications from attacks by criminal gangs or by attempts to penetrate the systems of critical national information infrastructure. Moreover, individuals, guided by different motives can cause large, asymmetrical of the used by now means, damage to critical infrastructure, which seriously challenge the power of institutions of large and small countries in their efforts to protect national security. Besides great physical potential and immediate financial losses, the very threat of possible future cyberattacks impunity breeds distrust and reluctance to work with the new technologies in society, which in turn leads to negative attitudes in the public opinion and questions the reliability of electronic, financial and medical resources and services. Even the loss of confidence itself can lead to enormous social and economic disruption. 3. Cyber Conflict and Cyber War Phenomenas In response to cyber conflicts in society may occur a number of negative consequences, such as legal regulations

3 Military Art and Science 261 restricting and even violating human rights, and may even provoke violence (both over individual groups and between the state institutions and civil society in its entirety). With the increased activity of malevolent entities and major attacks on critical information infrastructure in the last few years it becomes possible to outline and identify phenomena as cyber conflict and cyber war. Cyber war, compared with conventional wars, is rather inexpensive; it can be initiated from anywhere and does not require large amounts of troops and weapons, but only a computer and Internet access. The cyber conflicts and cyberwars in which they can grow are among the greatest challenges of today and tomorrow. Because of the nature and speed of destruction may be affected thousands of targets across the planet. The cyberwar phenomenon itself is not discussed widely and availably for comparison and in this case even the Cold War would prove an era of publicity and openness. Therefore, the investigation and detection of problems related to the use of cyberspace as a platform for keeping secrets strife is more than obsolete. In the scientific literature it is accepted that for the first time the concept of information war was used in the publication by Thomas Rhona back in 1976 [1]. Although the fact that the exact boundaries of the cyber war phenomenon have not yet been identified and are contested in research circles a more general working definition can be formulated as a war waged in cyberspace, using information and communication technologies in order to destruct ICT probable opponent [2]. According to the security expert of the US government Richard Clarke in his book Cyber Warfare [3], cyber war this is the action of a nation state intrusion into computers or networks of other national state in order to achieve the objectives of loss or destruction. The British magazine The Economist describes cyber war as a fifth field of the war, after land, sea, air and space [4]. Assuming that cyberspace is a conceptual and physical reality, the escalation of conflicts in it to higher levels, leads to serious losses in almost all spheres of public life and allows us to introduce the concept of cyber war. Information environment creates new possibilities for military impact. It changes in a very high degree the preparation as well as the actual conduct of modern war. New technologies have made it possible to increase the precision of weapons, to achieve an exceptional degree of complexity of military offensive and defensive systems, to use ultra-modern, including spacecraft means of intelligence, to improve significantly, to the utmost degree the coordination of warring parties on the battlefield. Information from a supportive, tactical, operational maximum resource has turned into a resource of strategic importance [5, 6]. Among the main objectives of fighting in the first phases of the war is already the achieving of information superiority: To win wars today, one must first win the information war. Today the ability to collect, share, process and store information is the most important determinant of military power [7]. The intensive introduction of new electronic technologies increases to utmost degree the combat capabilities of conventional armaments and especially of the military equipment. This is the original cause that today military experts consider ICT as an extremely effective weapon, which is also the priority target for destruction because of the same quality, and assess cyberspace as a convenient area for the deployment of military action, like land and sea, air and space. As noted by a former general in the Armed Forces of the United States These communication and information technologies that connect major economic, physical and social assets have been adopted and adapted by the military and paramilitary organizations,

4 262 Military Art and Science thus bringing about revolutionary changes in warfare altering the way for planning, organizing and conducting combat operations. These quality changes include and at the same time increase the opportunities for intelligence, surveillance and evaluation, and for command and control of forces. They help optimizing the transport of forces and means, ensuring the accuracy of navigation using intellectual-saturated highly precise weapons and using «The Network» as an environment, with the assistance of which and between the limits of which are conducted military operations [8]. New information technologies allow multiple increase speed in processing large amounts of data, which eases making complex operational decisions and essentially creates new tactical methods of armed struggle. They sharply increase the combat potential of electronic systems, which turns them into a new type of information weapons intended to defeat both the military and the civilian infrastructure of the enemy by damaging or destruction of its computer networks. Using the cyber environment, the opponent may deploy information weapons (e.g. tools for data collection and analytical processing, stations for radio-electronic combat, impulse and electromagnetic weapons, etc.) and use it in a defensive or offensive operation together with traditional weapons. According to some expert data the invisible weapon is capable to end the conflict before the start of physical combat, because the escalation of information confrontation could lead to disaster for one of the opposing sides. In this sense it can be claimed that the possession of a high technology information weapon provides outstanding benefits and if not today, then in the foreseeable future will successfully compete even with nuclear weapons. These two weapons will become a powerful factor for political pressure and threat. Information weapon gradually becomes one of the main components of the military potential of modern states and today many countries, especially the highly developed (the USA, China, the Russian Federation and many others) consistently and persistently prepare for keeping information wars. To this aim also not so technologically advanced countries as they strive to acquire options for keeping information wars. It is quite possible because the information weapon has certain characteristics that make its spread fast and difficult to control. It has relatively low prices and this makes it quite accessible to various malevolent entities. It can be developed, built, implemented and even used hidden to the general public from various aggressive regimes which raise it in rank of a too dangerous global problem. 4. From Cyber Conflict to Wishfull Ciber Peace Conditioned by information weapons threat to international peace and security requires from the international community express countermeasures and monitoring of threats to information security of the national and global infrastructure. The establishment of effective mechanisms of counteraction and control faces some objectively existing problems of conceptual nature. For example, the absence of an internationally accepted consensus on the defining the phenomena information weapon, information conflict and information war. Answers to these questions are of the competence of experts from various fields of international relations and require the conduct of long lasting and difficult negotiations, but these will be the first practical steps towards the neutralization of threats of conflict and war in this so sensitive area of human relationships. The following possible actions towards fulfilment of effective regulation in the information confrontation is to achieve international arrangements for the recognition of higher overall acceptable level of protection from conflict, according to the principle of minimum necessary

5 Military Art and Science 263 communications. With the adoption of the necessary legal documents would be prevented unnecessary destruction and suffering for the participating in the conflict parties. They would also serve as a guarantee for the non-participating third countries in the conflict. If the international community is serious about the creation of an effective regime to regulate occurred and escalated cyber conflicts, it shall determine normative acts performed by private entities having aggressive character in cyberspace (e.g. terrorist attacks). In this case there is an objective difficulty for the precise identification of the perpetrators concerning subsequent legal sanction. If the attack was carried out from the territory of a country that suffers, sanctioning actions can be borrowed from the best practices of international humanitarian law (IHL). There, in the case of illegal acts or inactions related to the violation of the norms of international humanitarian law by the citizens of a particular country, the guilty party is sanctioned according to the existing national legal regulations, and to these actions usually belong the terrorist acts. If the information attack is carried out by another, often a neutral country, the guilty parties can be extradited to the country subjected to attack or be brought to justice in the country where the attack took place. Of course, the choice of options depends on the possibility to create a balance in the relation objective desire of the international community to deal with this kind of crime the existence of relevant national legislation forming environment of zero tolerance in the international community to terroristic actions in the information space. In this context people should seek an opportunity to create international regulation in cyber conflicts where the international community has to establish and adopt rules and sanctions. This regulation should include a number of obligations on signatories and the control of various NGOs and their networks. Its creation could be based on the experience of different countries in their countering the attacks on their national critical information infrastructure. Currently, in many countries have already been adopted amendments to the Penal Code and laws on cybercrime. Serious challenge that hampers the establishment of an effective international legal system of conflict management in the information space is the fact that in most developed countries there is no common understanding of the nature of cybercrime, about what action and what behavior can be classified as cybercrime. Of course, there are other, essentially subjective circumstances that hamper international cooperation in the detection of crimes in cyberspace. It is generally known that highly technologically developed countries have a number of advantages in the information space and would not like to lose them in a highly competitive and dynamically developing information environment, particularly those which relate to the national security. About the existence of these subjective reasons speaks the fact that the created in 2001 by the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime (CoE) to harmonize the different positions and serve as the basis of international law for cybercrime, by 2010 is ratified only from 26 countries. It should be noted that in the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe there is no determined generally acceptable definition of cybercrime, which makes more difficult the counteract to this phenomenon. Currently still there is no accepted international convention, despite the presence of several international agreements on cyber security. One of the most serious problems is that there are not any international agreements on rules for the development, dissemination and use of cyber weapons, as well as agreements governing the use of malware for military purposes. Also there is not a legal framework to limit the intelligence agencies or the military to

6 264 Military Art and Science invest in the creation and testing of cyber weapons. All this, according to the head of the laboratory Kaspersky which discovered the virus Flame, can lead to some very serious security threats, namely [9]: the emergence of an extremely dangerous virus attacking critical infrastructure sites, which would spark a regional/global socio-economic/ecological disaster; the usage of a cyber weapon provoking classical kinetic conflict; staging/provocation by a cyberattack as a justification of a military attack on another country. The first step to avoid such scenarios should be integration of cyberspace in the already agreed rules of war and peace in the other areas. 5. Concept of Cyberpeace In the recent years the concept of cyber space has been increasingly discussed on world forums dedicated to cyber security [10]. The most striking use of the term cyber peace though not in its fullness dates back to 2007 when it was used in the Cyber peace initiative within the International Women s Peace Movement of Suzanne Mubarak (SMWIPM), which was conducted on the Declaration and the United Nations Program for world culture. The mission of this initiative was the expanding of rights and opportunities for young people of all nations to use the potential of ICT for safer Internet and stimulating the innovations. The term cyber peace had been met before, but vaguely and unsystematically in the research on issues related to peace. While the terms cyberwar and cyber defense are associated with offensive and defensive actions and operations by the method of retribution, the term cyber peace should express dynamic state in which all the participants in cyberspace exhibit peaceful behavior. In this context, the cyber peace has much broader concept than in the SMWIPM version and is creating a universal order in cyberspace. Seen from this angle, the term refers more to politics and has a political focus with orientation to the correct choice of action and behavior. Of course, as with the term cybersecurity here is still no single accepted firm definition of cyber peace. As a starting point could be used the general concept of peace as a prudent state of rest, absence of disorder, distortion and violence (not only direct violence with the use of force but also indirect restrictions). Moreover, in the understanding of peace are included legal and moral principles, possibilities and procedures to regulate conflicts and achieve stability. An overall experience to formulate the concept of peace and culture is seen in the Declaration and Program of Action on a Culture, affirming the values of peace [11] of the UN General Assembly from October This document describes a set of values, attitudes, traditions, requirements and prerequisites for peace. It establishes the path that helps achieving and maintaining peace. This document, citing the UN Charter and the Decree of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations, states that wars begin in the minds of the people and therefore the defense of peace must be constructed in the mind [12]. Important elements of peace and culture of peaceful behavior, are not only the refusal of the use of force and maintenance of non-violence. There is also included a set of values and behavior patterns, international law and order, positive and dynamic processes of participation and human rights (e.g. the principles of freedom, justice, democracy, tolerance, solidarity, cooperation, pluralism, cultural diversity, dialogue, understanding and mutual assistance in resolving conflicts). The biggest emphasis is placed on the ethical component of peace in the context of cyberspace respect and consideration of human freedoms (freedom of expression and opinion and information as well as

7 Military Art and Science 265 access to information). All these principles of course have an indicative nature. 6. Principles That Would Ensure Peace and Stability in Cyberspace Recently, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) formulated five principles that would ensure peace and stability in cyberspace. They establish specific actions and obligations and have the following idea: 1. Each government should provide its citizens with access to communications. 2. Each government is committed to protect citizens in cyberspace. 3. Each country should undertake not hiding in their territory cyber terrorists/ criminals. 4. Each country should undertake not to be the first to make the cyber attack against other countries. 5. Each country should cooperate with other countries in the framework of international cooperation for peace in cyberspace. Together with the Union, the World Organization of Scientists also engages in discussion and supplementing the above list of universal UN principles. As a result of this activity, in 2009, the principles of cyber peace are described in a brief statement in which is stressed that ICT can be a tool for the benefit of people and building a cyber peace as well as a powerful tool for creating conflicts. These principles read as follows [13]: 1. All governments should recognize that international law guarantees people free access to information and ideas and these guarantees also apply to cyberspace. Restrictions should only be imposed as necessary and accompanying measure in order to provide legal expertise. 2. All countries should cooperate in order to create a common code of conduct in cyberspace and harmonize the legal framework worldwide (incl. rules of procedure for assistance and cooperation in the investigation, but operating under privacy and human rights). All governments, service providers and users, should support international efforts to ensure the rule of law in the field of cybercrime. 3. All users, service providers and governments should support their efforts to ensure the privacy of users in cyberspace. 4. Governments, organizations and the private sector, including the citizens themselves should implement and maintain comprehensive security programs based on best practices and standards in the use of IT to ensure privacy and security. 5. People that make software and hardware should strive to develop secure technologies resistant to vulnerabilities that allow for recovery to a sustainable state. 6. Governments should actively participate in the UN programs to ensure global cyber security, cyber peace and prevention from conflicts in cyberspace. These principles and particularly the latter, require the commitment of governments not to use the potential of IT for conflicts in cyberspace. As an extension of the initiatives concerning cyber peace, in 2011 was published the book In Search for cyber peace [14]. It offers a broad understanding of cyber peace as a founding principle of the creation of a universal order in cyberspace. The next year a new initiative is proposed by the UN Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future. Its aim is to promote the understanding that sustainable peace can be built and maintained only on the basis of sustainable development. 7. Conclusion Indeed, looking for cyber peace at this pace of ICT development and capacity for conducting hostilities and cyberwar, governments and NGOs should cooperate in responding and revealing the sources of such hostile acts in cyberspace. Each year, the international community observes September 21 st as the International Day of Peace. This date is adopted by the General Assembly and is devoted to

8 266 Military Art and Science strengthening the ideals of peace both within countries and between them [15]. Why this date not be regarded as a day of the cyber peace? Today, achieving cyber peace is still a serious challenge to the international community. However, the challenge also entails opportunities. Whether this opportunity will be realized is a question that has no answer till now. An important condition to build and maintain peace is to know the laws of cyber jungle well. The Latin proverb, whose authorship is attributed to Plato Si vis pacem, para bellum ( If you want peace prepare for war ) is current for the new security environment too, and may be supplemented If you want peace be ready for (cyber) war! REFERENCES 1..,, (,, 2014), St. Elliot, Analysis on Defense and Cyberwars, Infosec Island. blogview/5160-analysis-on-defense-and-cyber-warfare.html, (July 2010). 3. R.A. Clarke, Cyber War. (Harper Collins, 2010). 4. Economist, Cyberwar: War in the Fifth Domain, node/ ?story_id= &source=features_box1, ( ) 5. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report, RL31787, Information Operations, Electronic Warfare and Cyberwar, (September 14, 2006) 6.,., (, 2014), Ibidem, Gen. J. Casciano, Threat Considerations and the Law of Armed Conflict, August E. Kaspersky, Flame,, /06/14/flame-that-changed-the-world/, (accessed ) 10. UN Chief Proposes int l Accord to Prevent Cyber War, (accessed 31 January 2010). 11. Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace. 53/243, October Ibidem. 13., 2009, ,, 2011, WFS PDF-R.pdf. 15.,