I agree with @evacide “attack v espionage” is a really fruitless hill for us to have to die on, especially because there are so many stupid and inaccurate buzzwords in cybersecurity, but here’s why people argue about it and what you need to understand: https://twitter.com/hacks4pancakes/status/1340309755743657984

Spies have existed since humans existed in organized groups. Warfare has also existed for that long. In that time, civilizations have generally treated espionage differently than attacks. For a long time, there’s been this unspoken understanding that *countries spy on each other*

That’s not just unfriendly countries. Everyone expects everyone else, even their friends, to do some Spy Stuff behind their backs. There are clear international definitions of what a spy is, and how they should be treated if captured in war or peacetime. Some do more, some less.

That doesn’t make espionage legal. It is most certainly illegal under international and National laws. Consequences range from deportation and sanctions to execution. However, the fact remains that most countries throughout modern history have treated it differently than attacks.

Now here comes big, bad, “cyber”. Some countries call it it’s own domain of war; like air, water, or land. After years in the field, I still personally disagree with this. Cyber is just information and command and control. Regardless, we treat it as it’s Own Separate Magical Box.

We forget that nothing is new under the sun. There have always been wars, and there have always been spies, intelligence gathering, counterintelligence... and they exist in the medium of computers and the internet and tech in general because they are important to our societies.

So it’s unfortunate that we don’t know how to use the proper words for what our adversaries are doing when they *steal information* versus *explode stuff*, because we decided cyber was it’s own Tron light cycle-land, with all its own terms for stuff. It’s not. It’s C2 and data.

So when people get annoyed with you for calling cyber espionage (spying on stuff using computers) a cyber attack (something potentially / purposefully going kaboom), that’s why. Legally and militarily, the *response* is and should be different to these things.

Unfortunately, I agree that this is somewhat a fruitless battle until we recognize that computers and the internet are *not* magical or separate and are simply another medium in modern society that we have to defend.