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INTRODUCTION The rest of this work is organized as follows: Sec-
tion II presents the related works. Section III describes
Cyber Warfare (CW), which seeks to explore and the mechanism proposed in in this work to allow the
manipulate digital information, is becoming increas- communication between the EA and the cyberattack
ingly relevant in the international context. Advanced in a radar system. Section IV presents the simulation
cyber attacks have been documented and the studies results. Finally, Section V brings the conclusions.
generated for their understanding shows the feasibility
of development of others even more powerful and with
great potential to achieve strategic objectives [1,2,3]. RELATED WORKS
Among these attacks are the malwares, i.e. malicious The disclosure of the Stuxnet malware in 2010
codes that aim to interfere with the functioning of sys- showed the details of a worm endowed with a sur-
tems. Stuxnet [4], an example of malware supposedly prising level of complexity [4,5]. Its refinement raised
produced by Nation-States, was able to delay a coun- concerns about the development of specialized, high
try’s nuclear program by a few years [5]. In the military skilled and complex cyber weapons, with multidisci-
operation Orchard, according to the literature [6,7,8], plinary design. The literature [4,5] shows that it would
the Israeli air force attacked a Syrian facility without not be possible to develop such a sophisticated weapon
being noticed thanks to a malicious cyber mechanism without extensive technical support of highly qualified
installed in the Syrian radar system. One hypothesis human resources from different technical fields (e.g.
raised in the literature [6,7,8] regards to the possibil- Information and Communication Technology, Con-
ity that an Electronic Attack (EA) – i.e. an attack per- trol Engineering and Nuclear Engineering). It would
formed in the electromagnetic spectrum – was used to have been created by State institutions to achieve stra-
unleash a cyber attack capable of hindering the radar tegic objectives in the international environment [5].
computational process. Such integration of electronic The target of Stuxnet was an Iranian nuclear enrich-
and cyber attacks presents itself as a new trend in mod- ment plant that had its operation impaired, delaying
ern warfare, where the resulting cyber-electronic at- the country’s nuclear program by some years. Today,
tacks represent a novel class of threats to be addressed several studies on it are available, showing that such
[9]. attack model can be used as inspiration for individuals
In the maritime sector, radar systems are used as with malicious intentions against other critical targets.
relevant sensors for navigation safety or as a source The same concept of multidisciplinary attack can be
of information for integrated navigation systems. Note used to impair other platforms, including systems and
that a compromised radar system may result in seri- sensors used in naval environments, which may have
ous risks to the vessels’ safety, with possible impacts cyber vulnerabilities – intentionally implanted or not.
in a wide range of areas (e.g. economic, environmen- In [9], the authors discuss the concepts of hybrid
tal, defense, etc.). For this reason, it is important to attacks in the scope of sea power, where the cyber,
study how such kind of cyber-electronic attacks can be electronic and kinetic warfare can be integrated to ac-
implemented and seek for possible countermeasures. complish specific tactical and strategic purposes. The
This paper presents how a template matching separate application of these kinds of warfare has been
technique can be used in a cyber-electronic offensive usual in modern military operations, however it is no-
[9] to detect specific EA patterns and, thus, use this ticed that there is a trend for these warfare dimensions
information to trigger a malicious cyber process in a to merge so that actions in one of them cause effects
radar system. The main contribution of this paper is to in the others. An example of hybrid attack is sown in
demonstrate, for the sake of awareness, a mechanism [10], where the authors demonstrate an EA (more spe-
that can be used as a link between an EA and a cy- cifically a GPS spoofing attack) that is able to produce
ber weapon. More specifically, the mechanism is used a kinetic effect on a ship navigation.
to allow an EA to trigger a cyber weapon previously Among the possible kinds of hybrid attacks dis-
installed in the naval radar system. The effectiveness cussed in [9], this paper focuses on the cyber-electronic
of the proposed mechanism is assessed through simu- attack. More specifically, it addresses a particular at-
lations in Python, where the target is a generic radar tack against naval radar systems which, to the best of
system used for maritime navigation. our knowledge, is not explored in the literature. Ac-

CIAW – EFICIÊNCIA, CULTURA E TRADIÇÃO 69