Introduction to Cyber-Warfare: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Cyber Warfare has become a global problem threatening governments, corporations and individuals. This new domain of warfare is not only inhabited by governments such as China, Russia, Iran, and the United States, but a variety of other actors including insurgent groups like Hezbollah and Hamas as well as hacking groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec, and others. According to a recent analysis the global market for Cyber Warfare consulting, product development and protective services will reach a value of $15.9 billion in 2012. This in-depth text on cyber warfare, written by experts on the front lines, explores the cutting edge world of cyber-warfare including the following:

• Provides a multi-disciplinary approach to Cyber Warfare analyzing the information technology, military, policy, social, and scientific issues that are in play.
• Presents detailed case studies of cyber-attack including inter-state cyber-conflict (Russia-Estonia), cyber-attack as an element of an information operations strategy (Israel-Hezbollah,) and cyber-attack as a tool against dissidents within a state (Russia, Iran)
• Explores cyber-attack conducted by large, powerful, non-state hacking organizations such as Anonymous and LulzSec
• Covers cyber-attacks directed against infrastructure such including but not limited to water treatment plants, power-grid and a detailed account on Stuxent

About the Authors

Paulo Shakarian, Ph.D. is a Major in the U.S. Army and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) teaching classes on computer science and information technology as wells as conducting research on cyber-security, social networks, and artificial intelligence. He has written over twenty papers published in scientific and military journals. Relating to cyber-warfare, he has written the paper "Stuxnet: Cyberwar Revolution in Military Affairs” published in Small Wars Journal and "The 2008 Russian Cyber-Campaign Against Georgia” published in Military Review. His scientific research has also been well received, featured in major news media such including The Economist and Nature. Previously, he has authored Geospatial Abduction: Principles and Practice published by Springer. Paulo holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park, a B.S. in computer science from West Point, and a Depth of Study in Information Assurance also from West Point. Paulo has served two combat tours in Operation Iraqi Freedom. His military awards include the Bronze Star, Meritorious Service Medal, Army Commendation Medal with Valor Device, and Combat Action Badge.

Jana Shakarian is a Research Fellow at the West Point Network Science Center conducting sociological research in support of various DoD-sponsored projects. Previously, Jana has worked as a research assistant at Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics at the University of Maryland where she extensively studied terrorist groups in south-east Asia in addition to other research initiatives at the intersection of social and computational science applied to military and security problems. She has written numerous papers in addition to co-authoring the book Computational Analysis of Terrorist Groups: Lashkar-e-Tabia, to be published by Springer in the near future. Jana holds an M.A. in cultural and social anthropology and sociology from the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz where her thesis was on "new war” theory.

Andrew Ruef is a Senior Systems Engineer at the firm Trail of Bits (New York, NY) where he conducts information security analysis. Andrew has nearly a decade of industry experience in computer network security and software engineering, working on various projects including reverse-engineering of malware, analysis of computer network traffic for security purposes, system administration, and development of secure software products. Andrew has also written numerous white papers on information security and has spoken at various conferences such including a recent conference talk at the Dagstuhl computer research center in Germany. Currently, Andrew is working toward his B.S. in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park.