The Proliferation of Weapons in Cyberspace

Non-state actors in cyberspace, particularly criminal and terrorist organizations, can make use of, or already have made use of, variations of existing malicious codes and convert them so as to serve the organization’s purposes. The greater the accessibility of A unique aspect of cyberspace not found in other arenas of combat is the ability to defend against viruses or other malicious codes; that have already been used in the past and discovered by security bodies. Ostensibly, cyber weapons can be used only once, as they become useless the moment they are identified and signed. That said, do all the man-years invested in developing sophisticated malicious codes go down the drain as soon as an attack is discovered and signed? This article shows that they do not. As cyber attacks increase, cyber tools and capabilities proliferate around the world. One of the main reasons for this is that cyber weapons, for example, malicious code used in one attack can be used for other attacks as well after they are converted. In a term borrowed from the world of biology, this is called “mutated code.” Such code has functional characteristics similar to the original code from which it was created (and can even be totally identical). The difference between the original code and the mutated code is syntactical (structural) only and not semantic, where it is intended to evade the radar of software that identifies attackers.From this we can conclude that if malicious code falls into the hands of an adversary with motivation and capability, it provides the attacked party with a weapon which, if it arms itself appropriately while executing complex actions such as reverse engineering, can be exploited for repeated use. In addition, an attacker who understands the weapon can use it effectively and change it according to his needs to carry out further attacks.