Stanislav Abaimov - Cyber Arms: Security in Cyberspace

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy!

Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemys fate in our hands.

The Art of War

The invention of computerised communication revolutionised human life, enhanced human interaction, accelerated business management, and skyrocketed scientific research. Along with these benefits came the new unknown threats, stealthy cyber weapons and the fifth military domain.

Originally, malicious cyber codes were used for jokes and creative art projects. Over time, the application of malware revealed its offensive potential and attracted the attention of cyber-crime. Advanced cyber arms and weapons are now developed and produced by the flourishing cyber industry, and widely acquired and used by criminals, terrorists, national intelligence services, military forces, etc.

For the purpose of clarity in this book, we distinguish cyber armsas software able to function as an independent agent, cyber toolsas cyber arms used for specific purposes, and cyber-physical weaponsto be physical weapons, i.e. robots, drones, with cyber command and control systems.

Cyberspace, an artificially created virtual reality, is inhabited by software able to implement certain functions. Specific pieces of code that can act as independent agents and run commands are called cyber arms. These have a dual-use nature and, depending on the aim of application, they can be used both as a cyber-security tool as well as a cyber-weapon.

The anthology below covers the evolution of selected malware, i.e. viruses, worms, trojans, bots, ransomware, implants, as well as cryptominers, and highlights the increased scope of its destructive potential. Its history dates to the production of the first computer and cyberspace itself.

The end of the 1930s was marked by the birth of the first electric programmable computer, the Colossus, the 1940s by the first digital computers, the 1950s by computers capable of storing and running programs from memory and the first commercial scientific computers. Since that time, the computer race has only been escalating and the inquisitive human minds dedicated their efforts and intelligence to improve the new virtual reality and harness all its benefits.

The predecessors of modern cyberarms were harmless minimalistic programs that resembled games and sent cryptic messages to users. The programmers and fiction writers of 1970s80s were enthusiastic in developing visionary ideas about the potential of this emerging virtual reality. The following examples illustrate four decades of cyber arms evolution, from their stone age where they were prank viruses to the current state of AI-empowered malware frameworks.

Over 20 years before the creation of the first malware,

The Creeper Virus, commonly recognised as the first computer virus, is released. Created as an experimental self-duplicating program to illustrate a mobile application, it located a computer in the network, copied itself inside the computer, simulated the printing process, destroyed the file, and displayed a message on the screen Im the creeper, catch me if you can! It was also able to duplicate itself erasing previous versions. The piece of code named the Reaper was created to counter Creeper virus and, thus, became one of the first examples of an anti-virus program.

Two years later, Michael Crichtons movie Westworld screened the first concept of a computer virus, causing inexplicable problems and breakdowns spreading like a disease between the androids.

The Rabbit (or Wabbit) virus is developed. It overloaded the computer resources by multiplying itself until it blocked the system, reduced its performance, and crashed the computer. Today, it would have been named a fork bomb as it caused a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack.

John Brunners novel The Shockwave Rider , published in 1975, coined the word worm to describe a self-replicating program that propagates itself through a computer network.