Cyber war

A collection of operations carried out in and through the cyberspace with the goal of denying to the enemy - effective and not - the efficient use of systems, arms, and informative systems or infrastructures and processes monitored by the latter. It also involves defence and "enabling" activities (aimed at granting the availability of cyberspace and its use). It can be a "traditional" conflict when it includes armies of two or more countries, that is "irregular" when it is performed between official and non-offficial parties. It can represent the only confrontation way, that is being one of the conflict aspects that involves other fields (earth, sea, air and space); in both cases, its effects can be bounded by the cyberspace and resulting to be real damages, including deaths.

SOURCE: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri – Sistema di informazione per la sicurezza della Repubblica, “Il linguaggio degli Organismi Informativi”, Glossario Intelligence