Cyber Mercenaries
When you are in a position of power and influence, when you are calling the shots, you start to expect things to stay the same. You know, what’s the big deal?
You wouldn’t have reached such a position if you couldn’t identify a threat. So, imagine you are a country, and some other nation is doing something you’d rather they didn’t. You can’t involve yourself directly, of course. What you can do is get somebody else to do it for you, off the record. What’s the kicker? The country you imagined is actually the United States, the other nation is Iran and the threat was their nuclear program. The hired muscle is The Equation Group, a black-ops team of hackers assembled to cripple said program.
There’s no concrete proof they were mercenaries hired for the job, but what is known is that they succeeded in uploading a virus to an Iranian nuclear facility, and are affiliated with the NSA. Conceptually, a hacker group for hire is a staple of cyberpunk fiction a la Ghost in the Shell, but if the Equation Group isn’t a cyber mercenary team for hire, there are those who are. Chinese, Russian, Indian and US governments have all been at each other’s throats for decades now, stealing information and sabotaging (even rigging elections?).
The point is that these things aren’t new, but are being treated as if they are almost non-existent. The problem of “conventional” military type mercenaries is a broad and complex issue still to be regulated in its entirety. But at least if the damage they can do and threat they represent is understood, the threat of a cyber attacker remains vague but at least it’s starting to be discussed more.
