Cyber Spying

What is Cyber Espionage?​

Hello dear members, welcome to my article. In this post, I am going to talk about Cyber Espionage. Cyber espionage, is the act or practice of obtaining secrets and information without the permission and knowledge of the holder of the information from individuals, competitors, rivals, groups, governments and enemies for personal, economical, political or military advantage using methods on the Internet, networks or individual computers through the use of proxy servers, cracking techniques and malicious software including Trojan horses and spyware.

The word cyber was used in 1958 by cybernetics expert Louis Couffignal in cybernetics who investigated the discipline of communication between life and machine. Cyber as the meaning of the word Virtual, we can briefly summarize as belonging to the internet. It's from the word Cyber. The words cyber and space were used by William Gibson and later became used academically. The increase in computer use technologically has uniquely transformed societies, eliminating geographical restrictions with the widespread use of the internet. As a result, people have instant access to all kinds of electronic information and have uncovered cyberspace. Cyberspace is seen as a combination of numerous, rapidly expanding, and space that provides different methods of numerical interaction and communication.



The concept of spy is familiar to all of us; It means a person who learns the confidential information of a state or organization, transmits it to the organizations on behalf of himself or the state, and finds it. It has become an institutionalized profession with the development of history, which has been used since ancient times. It was seen as the biggest factor that increased success in war and It was used for this service.

In our age where technology is developing rapidly, new inventions are made and used primarily for the security and benefit of countries. Today, where this developing technology is dominant, the element that determines the greatest power in the world is technology. Espionage activities are seen in every field from telecommunications to computers, laser technology to aviation, that in the past, so they turned towards military and political fields.
While technological advances make it easier to store and protect information, they also facilitate espionage activities. While every information is available on the internet, it has become very easy to find the identity information and user accounts of individuals and institutions.



Cyber spy can be seen as the person who investigates confidential information using certain intelligence techniques in a virtual environment. There is no precise definition of cyber espionage, often the definitions of cyber exploitation, cyber discovery, cyber espionage are used interchangeably. Although these definitions are similar in nature, they contain different purposes.

Among the definition of cyber espionage; It is defined as espionage used to obtain military, political or rival secrets. Cyber exploitation; information obtained through access to enemy systems and networks, keeping work and actions confidential. Cyber talent is considered as all attempts to obtain information in order to contrast the enemy with fake initiatives.

There are some common points; It's among the states but it can be used in institutions, it uses the computer as a tool, there are no situations such as escape, chase and death as we see in the movies, it definitely progresses in secret and takes a long time.

Cyber espionage consists of 3 types; Economic / Industrial (Operation Brunhilde)
Military-led espionage (Albert T. Sombolay Trial)
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Politically conducted espionage (Watergate)



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The first stage in cyber espionage is discovery, it is necessary to find vulnerabilities in the system to be entered or captured. It aims to monitor the system with these vulnerabilities. These aim to obtain information about vulnerability scanning target systems used in the attack, to investigate IP and DNS information about networks, information system components, network structure, software used, information of existing accounts, details of personal information or corporate.

The information examined from the maps and the coordinates, the examination of the website constitute the entire research part in search engines and social networks. The other one is network scanning. Security test by the system administrator, management of network components, problems in the network, network topology, determining the services in the network are important for vulnerability detection.

Scanning, finding workstation, server, router, switching devices, access points in the running system, determining open door (port) TCP and UDP, determining the version with the service and application running from the port, determining the operating system and detecting the vulnerability, Nmap, Zmap, Masscan Scanning the network using tools such as, Hping, software such as Nessus, Openvas, core impact, nmapscripts, m3tasploit, and discoveries made using software such as sqlmap, acunetix, websrap constitute this part.

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The other stage is to proceed through the vulnerability found and make an infiltration. This happens with a cyber attack; The harmful part of the code is hidden and added to the system. The last process is to delete the malicious code after the desired information is obtained. As it can be understood from here, the basic stage of the cyber espionage process; It creates cyber exploitation, which is the monitoring and attack part of cyber discovery. That's why the three basic definitions are part of each other.



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Technology-leading countries are especially adapting new inventions and developments to military technologies. The target of cyber espionage can now be industrial secrets as well as state secrets. Hiding, seizing and using the inventions made with great effort is of great importance for the security of states.​

Although various spying activities have been observed for centuries, the emergence of small but high-capacity storage devices with increasing global competition and technological developments has increased cyber espionage activities.

When considered legally, although this espionage is not seen as a non-destructive intelligence gathering activity, it still has the right to file a lawsuit. However, if the information gathering part takes place under a military uniform, it isn't considered as espionage.

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The United Nations can provide this, the right to punish the captured cyber spy, and the right to sanction diplomatically if the territorial integrity of states is permanently damaged or endangered. Even though the spying activities of governments in computer systems are intense, it isn't seen as using force. The difference between cyber espionage and cyber attack emerges here.


Source: https://www.turkhackteam.org/sosyal-muhendislik/1921206-siber-casusluk.html
Translator Gauloran


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