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Abstract: Economic information warfare is considered as the activities to control, protect, and potentially disrupt economic activity through information and information systems (Chatterjee, 2008; Libicki, 1995). With the growing prevalence of cyber-attacks, there is increased likelihood of strategic attacks against national economies. However, the focus of the cyber-security efforts appear to be on the power and financial systems, and not on the physical transport systems. The physical transport infrastructure forms the backbone of the trade of raw materials and consumer goods. It is considered as a critical infrastructure as any disruption could have significant impact on national and regional economies. Cyber-security research has been conducted on various subsectors of the physical transportation infrastructure in isolation, however the physical transport sector is interconnected. Therefore trade in commodities often operates based on value chains and/or trade corridors. Cyber-attacks on any portion of the value chain can affect economies by impacting specific commodities throughout the value chain. The paper explores the strategic and economic implications of cyber-attacks against commodity value chains. Porter's Five Forces model, combined with a modified cyber security dilemma concept are used to classify the various scenarios based on the attacking and defending actors. This categorisation illustrates that it is possible to determine the defensive or offensive nature of the operation based on the actor types.
Keywords: commodity value chain, critical infrastructure protection, cyber-attack, economic information warfare
1.Introduction
The focus of the cyber-security efforts appear to be on the power and financial systems, however the physical transport infrastructure is often not considered, and if it is the scope is limited. However, all trade of commodities and products is conducted via this infrastructure. In particular, commodities can be seen to have global value chains with specific trade corridors, allowing the commodity market to be affected by targeting the supporting transport infrastructure. Therefore cyber-attacks disrupting the physical transport infrastructure can have significant economic consequences for the victim. As example if the impact the NotPetya ransomware has on the shipping company Maersk, whose global operations were disrupted and is estimated to have lost between $250 million to 300 million (Cimpanu, 2018).
The aim of the paper is to investigate the implications of cyber-attacks against the physical transport infrastructure as a form of economic information warfare. The paper...