Wiktionary
n. warfare taking place on the Internet, as by disrupting critical online services.
Wikipedia
Cyberwarfare has been defined as "actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption," but other definitions also include non-state actors, such as terrorist groups, companies, political or ideological extremist groups, hacktivists, and transnational criminal organizations.
Some governments have made it an integral part of their overall military strategy, with some having invested heavily in cyberwarfare capability. Cyberwarfare is essentially a formalized version of penetration testing in which a government entity has established it as a warfighting capability. This capability uses the same set of penetration testing methodologies but applies them, in the case of United States doctrine, in a strategical way to
- Prevent cyber attacks against America’s critical infrastructure
- Reduce national vulnerability to cyber attacks
- Minimize damage and recovery time from cyber attacks
Offensive operations are also part of these national level strategies for officially declared wars as well as undeclared secritive operations.
Usage examples of "cyberwarfare".
The Corporation had survived, but their enemy still lurked out in the dark of space, busying itself with cyberwarfare that was still unfinished, leaping from ambush every now and then to foil some important VoidCorp strategy, or even to do something as petty as kill an executive or two.