Assessing Civilian Willingness to Participate in On-Line Political and Social Conflict

Changes in the social dynamics and motivations of the hacking community are a potential catalyst that when combined with the expanding reliance of critical infrastructure components upon networked control systems may provide the genesis for the emergence of what is being called the civilian cyberwarrior The emerging visibility and salience of cyber-vulnerabilities within large elements of a nation's critical infrastructure is creating opportunities that are facilitating significant potential shifts in the power relationship between individuals and nation states. This paper examines some of these shifts in the social dynamics and motivations in the hacking community, their effects on the traditional power differential between individuals and nation-state actors and discusses the emergence of the civilian cyberwarrior – individuals that are encouraged and emboldened by this transformed power differential to engage in malicious acts against another country's critical infrastructure or even the critical infrastructure of their own country. In particular, this presentation will explore the findings from an international survey of youth to identify the situational and social factors that predict individual willingness to engage in physical and cyberattacks against various targets. The findings will assist researchers, law enforcement, and the intelligence community to proactively anticipate various threat scenarios and develop effective defenses against attacks on and off-line.

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