Spatiotemporal characteristics and drivers of global cyber conflicts

In recent years, state-sponsored malicious cyber activities have emerged incessantly, which has resulted in an increasingly severe international cybersecurity landscape. To respond to this challenge, researchers have engaged in extensive inquiries. Regrettably, these studies seldom quantitatively analyse the characteristics and factors influencing cyber conflicts from a geopolitical perspective. In this context, on the basis of a dataset encompassing cyber conflict incidents, national internal attributes and bilateral relations, we employ methods such as social network analysis and statistical regression analysis to explore the evolutionary trends, network structure, connectivity patterns, and drivers behind cyber conflicts. The results indicate that, on the one hand, cyber conflicts among countries mirror the geopolitical dynamics of the physical world and exhibit characteristics of regionalism similar to traditional geopolitical competition. There are several obvious cyber conflict groups in cyberspace, such as the South Asian conflict group, which is composed of India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. On the other hand, interstate cyber conflicts are influenced by domestic characteristics and foreign policies, with pronounced regional differences. For example, in areas such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where disputes and wars are frequent, confrontational military policies and strong technological innovation capabilities could exacerbate cyber conflicts within the region. In summary, we adopt a comprehensive and multidimensional approach with the aim to provide insights and references for related studies.