HYLAND
information warfare techniques.
• Attack operations, intended to damage or disrupt the enemy's
electronic data and networks, and/or cause further physical harm
to enemy personnel or assets. For example attack operations could
potentially be used to degrade an adversary's electronic defenses (e.g.
air defense networks), to degrade an adversary's leadership and military
communications, or disrupt an adversary's critical national infrastructure
for military or political effect.
• Defensive operations, intended to protect one's own electronic data
and networks and to prevent consequential harm to one's own people or
assets.
Defense analysts can find as much – or more – that is recognizable and
evolutionary, as is novel and unexpected in these activities. If one focuses
on effects rather than technology, the operations by the Tudor master spy
Sir Francis Walsingham in the 1580s5 to disrupt the Babington conspiracy
that planned to murder Queen Elizabeth I of England and replace her
with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, shows some mastery of "network
operations." Babington's secret communications were compromised by
Walsingham's cryptographers, and the Catholic network was exploited
for intelligence purposes. Eventually the network was attacked, brought
down, and the conspirators brought to Tudor justice.
Attacks or intelligence-gathering operations can be carried out in
cyberspace using one of three vectors:
Malicious Software ("malware"), which become in a military context
cyber-weapons: software attack, often over a network ("hacking"), is the
form of attack that attracts the most media interest, but it is not necessarily
