Page 216

REVISTA IEEE 9

218 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 9 / 2017 American millionaire holds an extensive history as a defender of the policies of the State of Israel. In a speech at a New York university he was asked his opinion about the nuclear agreement of the United States with Iran, to which Adelson responded: “What I would say is this: Listen. See that desert out there? I want to show you something.” Adelson stated that he would then drop a nuclear bomb. “The explosion would harm no-one—maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, scorpions…whatever”, he continued. But he would give a warning: “Do you want to be eliminated? That’s what I would say to those mullahs.” The video went viral on Youtube. Two weeks later, Ayatollah AliKhameini, supreme leader of Iran, stated that the United States should “slap those charlatans and crush their mouths”. A day after that statement, the web page of the chain of Las Vegas Sands casinos was hacked, by a collective calling itself Anti-WMD Team, so that it showed the following message: “Encouraging the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction UNDER ANY CONDITION is a crime.” Parallel to this defacement20 a cyber attack took place which destroyed twenty thousand computers within the casino’s network, with an estimated cost of 40 million dollars. The authors of the attack also sent to the communications media a video showing the passwords for access to the casino network, and sensitive information about the company. Within the environment of dictatorial regimes, these actors, especially if they are cloaked in the appearance of a “patriotic militia”, may also be employed to carry out coercion of political dissidents and other groups against which it is preferred not to act explicitly because of the prejudice this may represent for the foreign image of these governments. c) Provide speed and flexibility. The speed with which a State responds to cyber aggression which does not affect the basic pillars of its security is conditioned by the capacity to construct “a case” against those responsible for the attack. For this, it must not only collect technical and intelligence evidence so as to produce a solid attribution of responsibility, but must also make public opinion aware of the necessity for the response. This process is hindered if the aggressor has taken pains to dilute its responsibility by, for example, using a proxy in order to enjoy plausible denial. In order to enjoy greater agility when constructing a response, States may encourage, actively or tacitly, the range of cyber proxies which sympathize with them to take reprisals against the sponsors of, or those responsible for, the aggression. Along these lines, the insistence in recent years on the so-called “active defense” of “cyber torsion”21 is none other than a euphemism for the outsourcing to companies, and to other private actors of reprisal, of actions against the proxies used by other actors. 20  Defacement is an English Word which may be translated as “to disfigure”. This term is employed in the IT field to refer to the deformation or change produced intentionally on a web page by an attacker who has hacked into it. 21  VALLEJO, Angel, “The advance in cyber torsion”, Ciber Elcano, nº 3 (May 2015), pp. 7-13. http://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/wps/wcm/connect/68979900485661a5a4b6b77939ebc85f/Ciber Elcano Num3.pdf?MOD=APERES&CACHEID=1431364739259. http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee

REVISTA IEEE 9
To see the actual publication please follow the link above