This report presents an open source analysis of North Korea’s cyber operations capabilities and its strategic implications for the United States and South Korea. The purpose is to mitigate the current knowledge gap among various academic and policy communities on the topic by synthesizing authoritative and comprehensive open source reference material. The report is divided into three chapters, the first chapter examining North Korea’s cyber strategy. The authors then provide an assessment of North Korea’s cyber operations capabilities by examining the organizational structure, history, and functions of North Korea’s cyber units, their supporting educational training and technology base, and past cyber attacks widely attributed to North Korea. This assessment is followed by a discussion on policy implications for U.S. and ROK policymakers and the larger security community.

The Journal of Law & Cyber Warfare provides a public peer-reviewed professional forum for the open discussion and education of technology, business, legal, and military professionals concerning the legal issues businesses and governments arising out of cyber attacks or acts of cyber war. The Journal of Law and Cyber Warfare is published twice per year by top legal professionals and scholars from the law, technology, security, and business industries. The views expressed in the Journal of Law and Cyber Warfare are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Journal of Law and Cyber Warfare.

“We are dropping cyber bombs. We have never done that before.”—U.S. Defense Department official A new era of war fighting is emerging for the U.S. military. Hi-tech weapons have given way to hi tech in a number of instances recently: A computer virus is unleashed that destroys centrifuges in Iran, slowing that country’s attempt to build a nuclear weapon. ISIS, which has made the internet the backbone of its terror operations, finds its network-based command and control systems are overwhelmed in a cyber attack. A number of North Korean ballistic missiles fail on launch, reportedly because their systems were compromised by a cyber campaign. Offensive cyber operations like these have become important components of U.S. defense strategy and their role will grow larger. But just what offensive cyber weapons are and how they could be used remains clouded by secrecy. This new volume by Amy Zegart and Herb Lin is a groundbreaking discussion and exploration of cyber weapons with a focus on their strategic dimensions. It brings together many of the leading specialists in the field to provide new and incisive analysis of what former CIA director Michael Hayden has called “digital combat power” and how the United States should incorporate that power into its national security strategy.

“We are dropping cyber bombs. We have never done that before.”—U.S. Defense Department official A new era of war fighting is emerging for the U.S. military. Hi-tech weapons have given way to hi tech in a number of instances recently: A computer virus is unleashed that destroys centrifuges in Iran, slowing that country’s attempt to build a nuclear weapon. ISIS, which has made the internet the backbone of its terror operations, finds its network-based command and control systems are overwhelmed in a cyber attack. A number of North Korean ballistic missiles fail on launch, reportedly because their systems were compromised by a cyber campaign. Offensive cyber operations like these have become important components of U.S. defense strategy and their role will grow larger. But just what offensive cyber weapons are and how they could be used remains clouded by secrecy. This new volume by Amy Zegart and Herb Lin is a groundbreaking discussion and exploration of cyber weapons with a focus on their strategic dimensions. It brings together many of the leading specialists in the field to provide new and incisive analysis of what former CIA director Michael Hayden has called “digital combat power” and how the United States should incorporate that power into its national security strategy.

The new US National Cyber Strategy points to Russia, China, North Korea and Iran as the main international actors responsible for launching malicious cyber and information warfare campaigns against Western interests and democratic processes. Washington made clear its intention of scaling the response to the magnitude of the threat, while actively pursuing the goal of an open, secure and global Internet. The first Report of the ISPI Center on Cybersecurity focuses on the behaviour of these “usual suspects”, investigates the security risks implicit in the mounting international confrontation in cyberspace, and highlights the current irreconcilable political cleavage between these four countries and the West in their respective approaches “in and around” cyberspace.

Conflict and actors in cyberspace, cyber capabilities, technical challenges, innovations and requirements, Internet of things, international law and norms, international cooperation

What people are saying about Inside Cyber Warfare "The necessary handbook for the 21st century." --Lewis Shepherd, Chief Tech Officer and Senior Fellow, Microsoft Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments "A must-read for policy makers and leaders who need to understand the big-picture landscape of cyber war." --Jim Stogdill, CTO, Mission Services Accenture You may have heard about "cyber warfare" in the news, but do you really know what it is? This book provides fascinating and disturbing details on how nations, groups, and individuals throughout the world are using the Internet as an attack platform to gain military, political, and economic advantages over their adversaries. You'll learn how sophisticated hackers working on behalf of states or organized crime patiently play a high-stakes game that could target anyone, regardless of affiliation or nationality. Inside Cyber Warfare goes beyond the headlines of attention-grabbing DDoS attacks and takes a deep look inside multiple cyber-conflicts that occurred from 2002 through summer 2009. Learn how cyber attacks are waged in open conflicts, including recent hostilities between Russia and Georgia, and Israel and Palestine Discover why Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Vkontakte, and other sites on the social web are mined by the intelligence services of many nations Read about China's commitment to penetrate the networks of its technologically superior adversaries as a matter of national survival Find out why many attacks originate from servers in the United States, and who's responsible Learn how hackers are "weaponizing" malware to attack vulnerabilities at the application level