Who's Who in Cyber Warfare?

Wondering what's the current state of cyber warfare capabilities of certain countries, I recently finished reading a report "Cyber Warfare: An Analysis of the Means and Motivations of Selected Nation States", a very in-depth summary of Nation2Nation Cyber conflicts and developments I recommend you to read in case you're interested. It covers China, India, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and, of course, Russia. Some selected brief excerpts on China, Iran, and Russia :



China
"Beijing’s intelligence services continue to collect science and technology information to support the government’s goals, while Chinese industry gives priority to domestically manufactured products to meet its technology needs. The PLA maintains close ties with its Russian counterpart, but there is significant evidence that Beijing seeks to develop its own unique model for waging cyber warfare."



Iran
"The armed forces and technical universities have joined in an effort to create independent cyber R & D centers and train personnel in IT skills; and second, Tehran actively seeks to buy IT and military related technical assistance and training from both Russia and India."



Russia
"Russia’s armed forces, collaborating with experts in the IT sector and academic community, have developed a robust cyber warfare doctrine. The authors of Russia’s cyber warfare doctrine have disclosed discussions and debates concerning Moscow’s official policy. “Information weaponry,” i.e., weapons based on programming code, receives paramount attention in official cyber warfare doctrine."



Technology as the next Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was inevitable development, what's important to keep in mind is knowing who's up to what, what are the foundations of their military thinking, as well as who's copying attitude from who. Having the capacity to wage offensive and defense cyber warfare is getting more important, still, military thinkers of certain countries find network centric warfare or total renovation of C4I communications as the panacea when dealing with their about to get scraped conventional weaponry systems. Convergence represents countless opportunities for waging Cyber Warfare, offensive one as well, as I doubt there isn't a country working on defensive projects.



In a previous post Techno-Imperialism and the Effect of Cyberterrorism I also provided detailed overview of the concept and lots of real-life scenarios related to Cyberterrorism, an extension of Cyber warfare capabilities. It shouldn't come as a surprise to you, that a nation's military and intelligence personnel have, or seek to gain access to 0day security vulnerabilities, the currency of trade in today's E-society as well as recruiting local "renegades".



Undermining a nation's confidence in its own abilities, the public's perception of inevitable failure, sophisticated PSYOPS, "excluded middle" propaganda, it all comes down to who's a step ahead of the event by either predicting or intercepting its future occurrence. Information is not power, it's noise turning into Knowledge, one that becomes power -- if and when exercised.