Here we go again, the hack on Sony has been titled an “cyber war attack” by various news outlets and the government is now claiming that it was an act of cyber vandalism and not an cyber war attack. Euhmm, ok. Awesome – that really helped us forward. Guys how many times does it need to be repeated, we clearly see the “war” in “cyber war”, now let’s take a look at the definition of war:
In the picture above you will clearly see that the definition of war has to be understood in the following way:
- A state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country.
- Engage in war
Now let’s take a look, is Sony capable of performing cyber war activities which have the same impact like the Stuxnet virus? I guess not, now are the aggressors of Sony capable of performing such an attack like in the Stuxnet case? Maybe, but they decided not to do such an attack. The United States had to open their big mouth again and they started barking in all the directions. Sony was “able” to identify the aggressor within a very small time window but it was NOT ABLE to stop the attack within a small time window – NOW THAT IS WEIRD. Does Sony explicitly look at their security environment after a breach has happened? If yes, how the @!#@! are they able to identify the aggressor in such a small time window? (Rhetorical question).
The hack on Sony has been sooooooo blown up that it has allowed state actors to increase their surveillance assets and “cyber” technologies. Because hey, it has been dubbed “cyber vandalism” and this can happen to anyone.
To set things straight, governments and hacktivists are NOT able to win a war by performing “cyber” activities only. They will always need SOLDIERS to secure the targeted environment, and if you need to deploy SOLDIERS, you will need to have a declaration of war.