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Cyber Risks · Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks

How Well Do You Understand Your Cyber Adversary? – Part 3

Summary: In the final part of a Unit 42 blog series on adversary types, the author argues that no cyber terrorist event has actually occurred, and that the term is often used by commercial vendors and government officials to push fear, uncertainty and doubt. He defines cyber warfare narrowly as nation states using cyber weapons to destroy each other's national treasures for a political purpose, and says Stuxnet in 2010 was the first attack to meet that definition, while Estonia and Georgia were proof-of-concept attacks.

Why it matters: The author's point is that the security community itself fuels the confusion: if practitioners cannot precisely separate hacktivists, terrorists, spies and nation-state warfare, the press and the public have no chance - and the same loose language is what vendors and officials use to sell fear.

Read the original at Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks ↗

Topics
Malware
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