A Comparative Analysis of the Cyberattacks Against Estonia, the United States, and Ukraine

Abstract

This comparative international case study of cyber warfare provides a context for considering the evolution of cyber technologies as elements of hybrid warfare capable of creating confusion, disrupting communications, and impacting physical infrastructure (such as power grids and satellite-based communications and weapons systems). Expanding an unpublished paper recognized by the ASIS Foundation in its 2012 international student writing competition concerning global security, which compared the cyberattacks against Estonia in 2007 and the United States in 2012, this study re-examines and updates the original data in a broader analysis that primarily includes the cyberattacks against Ukraine during the 2013-2015 conflict, but also considers other incidents on the timeline of digitization. The study shows how cyber warfare, first reported in the 1990s, has become an integral component of war today for both state and non-state actors who use zombies and robot armies to penetrate national boundaries and firewalls via satellites.