Last week I spoke on this topic at the TTI/Vanguard conference “Cyber Insecurity” in Washington DC and the feedback that I received was very encouraging. Many people told me that it really helped them understand the criticality of cyber attacks when they could see real-world consequences as the end result.

2010 marks a sea change in the evolution of cyber conflict. Starting with the backlash of Chinese hacker attacks after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Kosovo (1999) to the Estonia attacks in 2007, Denial of Service was the dominant theme in the first evolution of cyber conflict.

The Russia-Georgia war 2008 and Operation Cast Lead (Israel – Hamas) in 2009 represented the second evolution – synchronous cyber and kinetic attacks.

The third evolution is multi-modal which I define as the planning and execution of a physical assault against a targeted individual or group where cyber operations are fully integrated throughout. Examples are:

• The assassination of Gennady Pavliuk by the Kyrgyzstan intelligence service (December, 2009)
• The arrest and jailing of Iranian dissidents by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (April, 2010)
• The targeting of U.S. law enforcement agents by Mexican drug cartels (May, 2010)

In military terms, a multi-modal strategy is sometimes referred to as “Hybrid Warfare”, and I consider this evolution so important and so dangerous that I’ll be updating and delivering it at all of my briefings and conference presentations between May and October. A key part of its success relies on our love of social networks and the resulting ease with which an adversary can gather enough PI to:

1. identify a target
2. breach his network
3. customize a mode of attack
4. execute the attack

From time to time on this blog and at Forbes Firewall, I’ll provide more information as well as examples on multi-modal cyber attacks as well as advice on how to protect yourself and your family from becoming victims.