Activities of modern intelligence services in cyberspace

Abstract

Espionage between countries dates back hundreds of years. Since the Internet was released for commercial use, developed countries started to exploit the advantages of computers and the Internet in espionage. Intelligence activity seeks to exploit all advantages and disadvantages of the mass use of information and communications technology (ICT) for purposes of intelligence activities. There is no serious intelligence service in the world which is not interested in this way of intelligence research, primarily because of the cost-effectiveness of such activity in comparison to other ways of collecting classified information. Nowadays, great powers are accusing each other of cyber espionage, the core issues being when one was spying on the other and who hired whom for that purpose. Cyberspace, by its nature, denies answers to these questions; in cyberspace it is very difficult to discover the identity of any malicious actor, as well as to prove the performance and ordering of such illegal operations. That is why the activities of the intelligence services in cyberspace will be ever more present, which will likely lead to changes in the way of intelligence gathering.