NYT story on cyber attacks on two major SouKo banks - presumably by NorKo.
I think this becomes the new brinksmanship/signaling in the digital age, meaning it's truly a virtual form of warfare and not a real warfare domain per se. It's easier and more clear than the usual diplo protests.
So we have this as a fifth vein of cyber (offensive/offending).
The five categories, in my mind, are:
- Sheer industrial espionage (see China - on mass scale)
- Sheer spying (done by all - with US long in the lead with NSA, but less so today as others catch up)
- Normal espionage (see Israel v Iran, US's Stuxnet with Israel v Iran, etc.)
- In support of conventional offensive ops (meaning, old-fashioned EW [electronic warfare] updated) - this being the least frequent use because true wars are shorter and less common now.
- Signaling
What I don't see is cyber as a separate offensive warfare category - i.e., that and that alone as THE attack. You use as enabler in traditional attack, or its virtual warfare at best (remember that virtual means "not X").
That's why I don't find cyberwarfare so novel or weird or supremely trumping as some do. It's just a lot of old modalities updated and augmented - nothing more.