What is Cyber Warfare? Cyber warfare is defined as an ongoing warfare between most countries today. It affects common citizens when critical services collapse—electricity goes off, mobile signals fail, and payment systems stop working, paralyzing daily life. The core target is a nation's critical information infrastructure (CII), including telecom, banking, financial services, power, medical, defense, and government operators.Key Insights & Topics Covered:• The Fifth Domain: Why cyber is rightly termed the fifth domain of warfare, unlike land, sea, air, and space, because it has no fixed boundary, making attribution extremely difficult.• Cyber Attack Strategy (The Playbook): Colonel Joshi explains the structured process of a nation-state attack using the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a primary case study. This process involves: 1. Reconnaissance and mapping the adversary's digital systems. 2. Identifying a supply chain vulnerability (e.g., exploiting accounting software like ME do). 3. Launching the exploit. 4. Lateral Movement across the entire government setup. 5. Integrating the cyber attack with kinetic military operations for a "multi-blow shock".• The Evolution of Conflict: Cyber warfare evolved from simple curiosity (1990s), to financial gains (ransomware/DDoS in late 1990s), to espionage (Ghost Net), and now to full-fledged state-level economic and public infrastructure decimation.• APTs and Hacktivism: Understand the role of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), who are often government-funded and work with political agendas, leveraging costly zero-day exploits.• The Weakest Link: Discussing the threat of "honey traps" and emotional compromise of citizens via dating sites and compromised apps, using people as a weakness against their own country.• Small Actors, National Costs: How small organizations (third-party vendors like Solar Winds) or small nations (like North Korea) can cause massive national disruption, including details on the historic Stuxnet program targeting nuclear reactors.• Cyber Fencing & Prioritization: The challenges of creating a "cyber fence" against malicious traffic mixed with legitimate data (like medical reports or remittances). Discover the critical asset prioritization during wartime: Hospitals are Priority #1, followed by banking/finance, and then power.• Future Convergence: Analyzing the massive security risks associated with the rise of AI in cyber defense and offense, the vulnerability of massive data stored on the Cloud and Satellites (Starlink), and the imminent threat of Quantum computing breaking current encryption standards (Hack Now, Decrypt Later philosophy).• Fighting Deepfakes: How geopolitical tensions fuel narrative warfare. We discuss the example of the deepfake video of President Zelensky and provide three essential checks citizens can use before sharing content.Colonel Joshi emphasizes the necessity of technological self-reliance (Atmanirbhar Bharat / Make in India) to mitigate vulnerabilities caused by high dependency on foreign-owned proprietary tools, hardware, and software (like Google, Facebook, and chips)
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