The theft of intellectual property is not the only motivation for cyber attacks. Indeed, while theft happens in the shadows and is often meant to remain in the shadows; political hackers are aiming to make a statement and to be noticed.
It is a statement that the weak can hurt the strong.
In recent weeks, the hacked AP tweet that announced the false news of a White House attack by a Syrian hacker “army” momentarily knocked off hundreds of billions of dollars of stock value. It was a demonstration of the reality and effects of the use of cyber attacks to conduct asymmetric warfare.
An example overlooked by many was the attack on Aramco last August that knocked out a vast part of its computer network. The attack took out over 30,000 computers, damaging hardware and software. It was intended to affect production. While this one largely was contained, as can be extrapolated by oil price spikes from production outages of minor players in the world of oil, a successful attack on Aramco would throw a much bigger wrench into the global economy.
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