Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies / Jeffrey J. Pickering / As the Internet is progressively integrated into industrial and defense-related networks around the globe, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how state and sub-state groups can use Internet vulnerabilities as a conduit of attack. The current social science literature on cyber threats is largely dominated by descriptive, U.S.-centric research. While this scholarship is important, the findings are not generalizable and fail to address the global aspects of network vulnerabilities. As a result, this dissertation employs a unique dataset of cyber threats from around the world, spanning from 1990 to 2011. This dataset allows for three diverse empirical studies to be conducted. The first study investigates the political, social, and economic characteristics that increase the likelihood of a state being targeted for cyber threats. The results show that different state characteristics are likely to influence the forms of digital attack targeting. For example, states that experience increases in GDP per capita and military size are more likely to be targeted for cyber attacks. Inversely, states that experience increases in GDP per capita and those that are more democratic are less likely to be targeted for cyber terrorism. The second study investigates the role that international rivalries play in cyber threat targeting. The results suggest that states in rivalries may have more reason to strengthen their digital security, and rival actors may be cautious about employing serious, threatening forms of cyber activity against foes because of concerns about escalation. The final study, based upon the crisis bargaining theory, seeks to determine if cyber threat targeting decreases private information asymmetry and therefore decreases conflict participation. Empirical results show that the loss of digital information via cyber means may thus illicit a low intensity threat or militarized action by a target state, but it also simultaneously increases the likelihood that a bargain may be researched, preventing full scale war by reducing the amount of private information held between parties.

This paper aims to describe and explain the Russian use of cyberattacks in the Ukrainian conflict. Two major cyber events, BlackEnergy in 2015 and NotPetya in 2017, are analysed by the theoretical framework of coercive diplomacy developed by Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, as well as the theory of cyber coercion made by Daniel R. Flemming and Neil C. Rowe. This paper concludes that the Russian use of cyberattacks could be understood as an extension of their already widespread practice of coercive diplomacy as a foreign policy tool. The cyberattacks were developed to pressure the Ukrainian energy and economic sector, through destabilisation of the economic powerbase and the country as a whole. The cyber offenses are developed to push the Ukrainian politics from western influence back towards the Russian political orbit. This due to the political, economic, and power interests Russia finds in the post-soviet state of Ukraine.

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The following thesis intends to study how cyber security and cyber threats are portrayed in Swedish political discourses on cyber between the years 2015-2021. How the question about cyber security is framed can have a major impact on Sweden’s security- and digitization policy and further, on the population's view of which problems are important and how resources should be allocated. Through qualitative text analysis, more specific discourse analysis, political debate articles and government reports will be analyzed to evaluate how the question about cyber security has been framed as an existential threat and if so, for whom?  The purpose is to investigate whether features of securitization occurs and if the question about cyber security can be defined as securitized. And further, what kind of measures has been proposed as protection against these threats? The study also aims to identify which actors' arguments and problem representations have had an impact. The results show that there has been a securitization move within political cyber discourses and a number of safety features have been proposed or have already taken place. The question about cyber security can therefore be defined as securitized. The results also show that a few numbers of government actors have the privilege to represent the problems and furthermore, decide what actions to take.

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yes / Cyber attacks are increasing in every aspect of daily life. There are a number of different technologies around to tackle cyber-attacks, such as Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), firewalls, switches, routers etc., which are active round the clock. These systems generate alerts and prevent cyber attacks. This is not a straightforward solution however, as IDSs generate a huge volume of alerts that may or may not be accurate: potentially resulting in a large number of false positives. In most cases therefore, these alerts are too many in number to handle. In addition, it is impossible to prevent cyber-attacks simply by using tools. Instead, it requires greater intelligence in order to fully understand an adversary’s motive by analysing various types of Indicator of Compromise (IoC). Also, it is important for the IT employees to have enough knowledge to identify true positive attacks and act according to the incident response process. In this paper, we have proposed a new threat intelligence technique which is evaluated by analysing honeypot log data to identify behaviour of attackers to find attack patterns. To achieve this goal, we have deployed a honeypot on an AWS cloud to collect cyber incident log data. The log data is analysed by using elasticsearch technology namely an ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana) stack.

Disruptive technologies developed in the digital age expose individuals, businesses, and government entities to potential cyber security vulnerabilities. Through the conceptual framework of general systems theory, this multiple case study was used to explore the strategies among owners of 4 retail small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in Melbourne, Florida, who successfully protected their businesses against cyber attacks. The data were collected from a review of archival company documents and semistructured interviews. Yin's 5-phased cycles for analyzing case studies provided the guidelines for the data analysis process. Three themes emerged from thematic analysis across the data sets: cyber security strategy, reliance on third-party vendors for infrastructure services, and cyber security awareness. The study findings indicated that the SME owners' successful cyber security strategies might serve as a foundational guide for others to assess and mitigate cyber threat vulnerabilities. The implications for positive social change include the potential to empower other SME owners, new entrepreneurs, and academic institutions with successful cyber security strategies and resources to affect changes within the community. SME owners who survive cyber attacks may spur economic growth by employing local residents, thus stimulating the socioeconomic lifecycle. Moreover, implementation of these successful strategies may catalyze consumer confidence, resulting in greater economic prosperity.

Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake’s book, Cyber war, claims to identify a new threat and vulnerability in the United States. By examining the points they make and evaluating them in the context of the first cyber attack, STUXNET, we shall conclude that the technical argument is correct; however the overall argument is incomplete. What they fail to emphasize is the amount of human intelligence involved in committing a successful cyber attack, and the extent to which having intelligence operations greatly enhances a state's cyber capabilities. / text

The present generation lives in the new information age as a result of rapid computer developments and the accessibility of the internet. Therefore, in the 21st century the world has to come to grips with the cyber space culture. Internet connections in South Korea, as in many countries in the world, make access to the world available in every house. Therefore, it is a necessity to understand the internet culture and internet is becoming part of everyday life. However, at the beginning of the 21st century, the most important attribute of the mission is missio Dei: the mission is God’s mission. God is a missionary God and mission has its origin in God. And finally, God also calls people as missionaries to share his love with the world. According to Bosch (1991:368-372), our daily life has become so fast and constantly changing that we cannot use past methods to be effective today. Therefore we need a paradigm shift in our thinking towards missions today, to become more relevant. There is a need for the church to understand this paradigm shift, and implement it into its thinking and practice of mission. Cyber mission is becoming important in the information age, and there are many advantages and disadvantages to it. These advantages are to be managed carefully. It is the church's responsibility to use cyber space to the advantage of God's Kingdom. The opening up of cyber space may prove to be a gift from God to his church today. Many Christians began to share their faith with others in cyber space through the internet and internet evangelism and cyber missions were born. Today, the internet has become one of the available means of sharing and proclaiming the Gospel. It offers us incredible power to share the Good News. The Christian has the great responsibility to the great commission to deliver the gospel to the end of the earth through the cyber Mission. The South Korean church became a strong Christian church, ranking as the second missionary sending country in the world of today. The South Korean church developed the cyber mission, as they realized the power of the internet. Most of the churches have their own web site and they have already started to use the cyber space for church ministry. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Science of Religion and Missiology / unrestricted

This diploma thesis deals with cyber relation of the United States of America and the People's republic of China. The aim of this diploma thesis is to answer the following questions: What kind of cyber threat for the United States does China represent? How is China's cyber strategy characterised? How do USA react on this threat and what are the gaps in this reaction? The thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter deals with definition of cyberwarfare and its perception in Chinese context. The second chapter analyses USA - China relation and its implication for cyber security. The third chapter represents US reaction on Chinese cyber threat. The last chapter deals with the gaps in the reaction. Keywords USA, China, cyber threat, cyberwarfare, cyber espionage