Cyber Espionage and Cyber Defence

Nation-states engage in cyber espionage because they hope to gain an advantage. Cyber espionage is attractive because it is less risky than traditional espionage; there are no spies that have to enter foreign territory. After introducing the primary protection goals of information security (confidentiality, integrity, and availability) as well as fundamental security design principles, we describe typical attack vectors. As state-sponsored hacking is well-funded, defensive measures are inconvenient and costly. We also present the attack-defence tree technique, which helps defenders to consider relevant attacks and countermeasures. Further, we show how different security vulnerabilities relate to attacks. Intelligence services state that their goal is to defend their homeland. However, citizens and business owners may be at the losing end: practices of stockpiling zero-day exploits and inserting backdoors on purpose make everybody less secure.