ABSTRACT
Cyberspace offers state and non-state actors the ability to wage campaigns against American political, economic, and security interests without ever physically crossing borders. Cyberattacks offer adversaries low cost and deniable opportunities to seriously damage or disrupt critical infrastructure, cripple American businesses, weaken Federal networks, and attack the tools and devices that Americans use every day to communicate and conduct business. This chapter provides a descriptive introduction to offensive cyber operations (OCO). OCOs are comprised of computer network attack (CNA) and computer network exploitation (CNE). It argues that OCOs constitute a revolution in military affairs and explains the special characteristics associated with cyber weapons. OCOs are the employment of cyber capabilities where the primary purpose is to achieve objectives in or through cyberspace and cyber warfare and generally understood to be CNE and CNA-style attacks. CNE and CNA often go hand-in-hand as CNE is conducted to collect information and conduct pre-attack reconnaissance prior to a CNA.
