In 2009, I read with great interest a paper published in the Journal of International Security Affairs titled The Art of (Cyber) War. In this paper, Brian M. Mazanec explained the People’s Republic of China was interested in cyberwarfare and had improved its capabilities to conduct military operations in the cyberspace.
The paper contained a table summarizing the nation states with cyberwarfare capabilities at the end of 2004.
Also in 2009, McAfee published its Virtual Criminology Report with the subtitle Virtually Here: The Age of Cyber Warfare. Inside, we included a map of the world showing the countries developing advanced offensive cybercapabilities. The map’s caption read: “Cyber war is not occurring right now, but nation-states are definitely in competition.”
That was four years ago. Last week a colleague asked me for a list of nations with cyberdefense capabilities or developing offensive capabilities, but I was unable to do so. Now I have found one. Raoul Chiesa–President, Founder, Security Brokers and Independent Senior Advisor on Cybercrime at the United Nations Interregional Crime & Justice Research Institute–published a document at the Hackito Ergo Sum 2013 conference.
The following chart summarizes the data. The information is provided “as is” and is merged into one table. It came from the “Cyber World” working group from the Italian Ministry of Defense and is dated 2012. In red are the nation states considered to have offensive capabilities; the others have only defensive capabilities.
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