State of the Art: Attackers and Targets in Cyberspace

The remit of this article is broad, and so the themes explored here are necessarily broad-brush and are viewed from a strategic and policy perspective. The subject under consideration is that of cyber threats -- what is it that we confront, and what dangers do they plausibly pose? Anyone even remotely familiar with the topic will know that cyber threats regularly receive extensive media coverage of varying quality, and are increasingly on the agenda of senior policy makers, military commanders, chief executive officers, and political leaders. More recently, cyber threats are becoming more well-known to members of the general public, whose lives are increasingly mediated through and dependent upon cyberspace in some form or another. The specter of criminality, such as theft of financial resources and personal identifying information, stalking, and the unwitting suborning of personal property (computers harnessed by botnets) for other criminal enterprises, is finally receiving the attention it deserves. Adapted from the source document.