The study of complex systems led to the development of the theory of conflicts, which allows for modeling and solving information conflicts between elements of information and cybernetic systems. This article is the next step of research in the field of information confrontation and describes the information conflict in the context of “object-object”. Based on the analysis of scientific sources, the classification of conflicts at the “object-object” level is presented. It is determined that for information and cybernetic systems, they discussed developments in the theory of conflicts that have specific features for different levels. The definition of information conflict is proposed as a process of interference in the information space and/or information system of the opposite party to violate the confidentiality, reliability, and integrity of the opponent's information. The classification of information conflict is carried out according to the following levels: between the means of information collection and information transmission; as means of radio-electronic warfare between means of information influence for counteraction, protection, or intelligence; between general purpose software applications and information protection programs; between software and technical means of information protection; between communication channels of information networks and protocols of their functioning. For each of them, the types of conflict situations are presented and solutions are recommended through the analysis of scientific developments on this problem. It is proved that the theory of information conflicts in information and cyber security systems has an innovative character, strengthening the creation and development of new technologies for ensuring the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of information. The approaches considered in this study can be used in the training of specialists in the field of information and cyber security.
In a rapidly changing world, information about what is happening is becoming a central commodity in international relations [1]. This caused an information conflict between those who want to dominate the information space, and control and manage the processes taking place in it. The theoretical justification for the emergence of information confrontation was presented in the study [1], which emphasized the importance of using the most important means of communication and information technologies—satellite surveillance, direct communication, high-speed computers, and unique opportunities in the integration of complex information systems [2, 3]. It was information conflicts that arose as a result of the introduction of information technologies in various spheres [4–6]. Information system conflict is related to the introduction or use of an information system that is perceived as inappropriate and as a threat to tasks, competencies, processes, values, and power relationships of individuals, groups, or organizations. IS conflicts are associated with resisting behaviors that express reservations in the face of pressure from change supporters seeking to alter the status quo by implementing an information system and related organizational changes [7].
Studying the applied aspects of the theory of conflicts in information and cybernetic security systems, the authors of the article [8] proposed to consider this problem in three contexts: “subject—subject,” “object—object,” “subject— object,” and, thus, for each of them, define an information conflict.
Articles [9, 10] became a continuation of these studies, which describe the conflict in the context of “subject—subject” and present an analysis of the problem at four levels (Fig. 1): the level of the individual (criminal—user); business level (internal and/or external violator—company manager); state level (violators/hackers—state institutions, state officials); the level of international relations (states, a group of subjects/hackers—institutions and/or political leaders of another state). Some methods and models of solving these conflicts are defined, in particular, a game-theoretic approach.
Subject—Subject Information conflict is a process of intervention in the information space and/or information system of the opposite party with a goal violation of confidentiality, authenticity and integrity information of the opponent Personality level (attacker—user) Business level (internal (external) violator— company manager)) State level (“hackers— state institutions, state officials”) Level of international relations (states, a group of hackers— institutions and/or political leaders of another state) This study is the next stage of the analysis of applied aspects of the theory of conflicts and is devoted to the problem of modeling informational conflicts in the context of “object—object”. 2. Conflicts Between Software and Hardware in Information and Cyber-Systems Informatization of society requires increasingly complex and resource-intensive information technologies and tools.
Modern computer systems help to solve the most responsible tasks in various industries, in particular, in government institutions of critical infrastructure and defense departments. A computer system is a whole complex that contains both software and hardware, with the help of which processing, storage, protection, and transmission of data is carried out. Therefore, the computer system must be able to integrate with other information tools and programs to ensure the efficiency and speed of the management process.
Thus, the accumulation, improvement, and complication of various components of the computer system leads to the occurrence of undesirable situations in the process of its functioning, which leads to the emergence of information conflicts between the lost and the hardware.
The analysis of the literature [
1. Information conflict is a clash, or incompatibility between the components of the information system at all stages of the implementation of new information technologies in the process of collecting, processing, transmitting, storing, and interpreting information about the state, intentions, and actions.
2. Information conflict in the context of “object—object” can be presented at the following levels: between means of information collection and information transmission processes; as Radio-Electronic Warfare (EW) between means of information influence for countermeasures, protection, or means of intelligence; between general purpose software applications and information protection programs; between software and hardware information protection; between communication channels of information networks and protocols of their functioning (Fig. 2).
It is easy to recognize and predict the increasing capabilities of processing and exchanging information. It is much more difficult to catch the legacy of growing information capabilities, especially the interaction between them [1].
Object—Object Information conflict is a clash, incompatibility between the components of the information system at all stages of the implementation of new information technologies in the process of collecting, processing, transmitting, storing and interpreting information about the state, intentions and actions between means of information collection and information transmission processes as Radio-Electronic Warfare (EW) between means of information influence for the purpose of countermeasures, protection or means of intelligence between general purpose software application and information protection programs between software and hardware information protection between communication channels of information networks and protocols of their functioning The process of extracting and collecting information requires a wide range of devices, means, and systems: from microphones, binoculars, and cameras to global radio astronomy systems, seismological monitoring systems, meteorological observations, and interplanetary scientific apparatuses. The choice of the specified devices means, and systems of collecting and extracting information, and methods of their application depend on the location of the monitored system, possible unmasking signs due to its design and the functions it performs, as well as on the purpose of the information collected about it, and goals set by the receiver (customer) of information.
The user for whom information is collected is
usually located at a certain distance from the
means (systems) that control the object or
process. Therefore, an integral component of the
information collection system is some data
transmission system. In addition, the received
data must be presented to the user in a form
convenient for him (meet ergonomic
requirements). The collection of information is
carried out to make management decisions both
about the objects, processes, and systems that
are monitored and about the correction of the
monitoring process itself. This involves human
participation (which is also inherent in other
categories of systems where information is
needed to achieve a certain result). Thus, it can
be assumed that we are talking about an ergatic
system [
Means and systems of information collection and its transmission, processing, and presentation to the consumer mainly directly or indirectly belong to the category of radioelectronic means and systems (EM, ES).
In a concise form, it is advisable to list them (without observing a certain hierarchy): radar systems of various purposes, systems of radio reconnaissance, radio technical reconnaissance, optical, thermal (in the infrared range), television, radiometric, hydroacoustic reconnaissance, magnetometric, seismic, acoustic, radiological, gravitational, embedded devices for eavesdropping and others.
Each of these systems and their components have their features of construction, work methods, and characteristics that must be taken into account when creating and analyzing a conflict model that is planned to be studied in the future.
Among the large number of tasks related to the assessment of the quality of the functioning of the mentioned means and systems, as well as the quality of their interaction with the consumer(s) of the received information (information exchange), at present, the task of conflict interaction of these means can be attributed to priority and systems: • With the environment (physical fields that are determined by the objects and processes of observation and are used for observation and transmission of information; physical restrictions imposed by the environment during the implementation of observation and transmission of information: natural obstacles, attenuation of fields and signals, interference, refraction, diffraction, scattering, multipath propagation, Doppler frequency shift, etc.). • Among themselves and with other thirdparty systems and means (unintentional interference and electromagnetic compatibility), as well as with Electronic Warfare (EW) systems. If we talk about electromagnetic compatibility, then for radio lines an important factor is the radio frequency resource and its distribution. From a physical point of view, the assignment of operating frequencies to one or another means depends on the functional purpose of the means(s), the characteristics of the propagation of radio waves of the relevant bands, the territorial placement of the means, and international and national regulatory documents. The functioning of the systems takes place in the conditions of disturbances, which will be discussed in the next section. 2.2. Information Conflict as RadioElectronic Warfare (EW) Between Means of Information Influence for Countermeasures, Protection or Intelligence Radio-electronic warfare (EW) is the use of radio frequency energy to provide advantages in the information space, as well as to protect one’s radio-electronic systems from enemy influence [11]. EW is defined in NATO as: “Military actions using the electromagnetic spectrum, including the search for, interception and identification of electromagnetic radiation, the use of electromagnetic energy, including directed energy, to reduce or prevent enemy use of the electromagnetic spectrum and actions to ensure its effective use by friendly forces” [12].
EW covers a wide range of activities that include detection, jamming, and destruction of enemy radio-electronic means. The main components of EW are means of radioelectronic suppression, radio-electronic intelligence, protection against radioelectronic interference, and control of the radio frequency spectrum.
Electronic Attack (EA)—The use of electromagnetic energy, High-Energy Lasers (HELs), and High-Power Microwave (HPM) devices or anti-radiation weapons to attack personnel, facilities, or equipment with the intent of degrading, neutralizing, or destroying enemy combat capability and is considered a form of fires [13].
Electronic Protection (EP)—Actions taken to protect personnel, facilities, and equipment from any effects of friendly or enemy use of electromagnetic spectrum that degrade, neutralize, or destroy friendly combat capability [13].
Electronic Warfare Support (ES)—Actions taken by, or under direct control, of an operational commander to search for, intercept, identify and locate, or localize sources of intentional and unintentional radiated electromagnetic energy for immediate threat recognition, targeting, planning, and conduct of future operations [13].
EA refers to the actions taken to prevent or reduce the enemy’s effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum. EP involves actions taken to protect the effective use of the electromagnetic spectrum for friendly forces. ES comprises all those measures taken to detect, intercept, locate, and analyze sources of radiated electromagnetic energy. So, all of the three components of EW must be carefully integrated to be effective [14].
Based on the above general provisions and components of EW, it is possible to specify the conflict interaction (influence) of the EW system with other information systems, depending on the specifics of their purpose, construction, and functioning (Table 1).
In the process of interaction of relevant information systems, the following characteristics must be taken into account when developing models of information conflicts between them: 1. Interference as electromagnetic radiation of various origins is inherent in the operating conditions of radioelectronic means under normal conditions and especially when conducting radio-electronic warfare. 2. Sensitivity of receivers (the level of interference determines the sensitivity of receivers, so it is not advisable to have less total power of the most characteristic unintentional interference at the input of the receiver). 3. Interference resistance—the ability of the system to perform its functions in the presence of disturbances with quality indicators not lower than the established ones. 4. Interference protection—з Interference as electromagnetic radiation of various origins is characteristic of the operating conditions of RES under normal conditions especially when operating RES. 5. Secrecy of an information system is the ability to perform its functions in such a way that the adversary does not have the opportunity to obtain information about the operation of the system, its characteristics, and the information circulating in it. 6. Electromagnetic compatibility of information systems and radioelectronic means.
The analysis of the literature [14–18] showed that at the current stage, the issue of improving EW with the help of artificial intelligence is being studied. In this direction, an AI-enabled EW system can be effective in identifying the hostile radar emitters to determine the extent of lethality of the threat. Then depending upon the threat perception, a suitable AI-based counter strategy can be formulated to nullify the hostile EW threat. Furthermore, the information gathered during radar signal analysis can be used to prepare a threat library to develop an Electronic Order of Battle (EOB) for situational awareness and develop flexible countermeasures as per the evolving EW scenario [14].
Along with this, there is a problem of inaccurate information, since the network is trained on a large database. Receiving false information in the process of training the network leads to negative consequences on the battlefield [16]. 2.3. Information Conflict Between General Purpose Software Applications and Information Protection Programs A software conflict occurs when programs cannot run on the same computer at the same time, meaning they have incompatible or conflicting code. This is usually due to a software bug and occurs when two programs compete for the same resource (memory, peripheral, register, etc.). It is possible to detect such a conflict most often during the execution process.
Research [19] is devoted to this problem. In their opinion, it is possible to classify such conflicts, which was proposed: 1. Unavailability or Inaccessibility of Shared Resources: Shared resources are often files, but also include other unique system resources such as network ports or C library function names. 2. Conflicts on Shared Data, Configuration Information, or the Information Flow Between Programs. 3. Interactions between Packages: In some cases, a package a using another package b makes a previously undetected fault in b evident; it is possible that other use cases for b could produce the same problem, so the failure can (at least in theory) be reproduced using b. 4. Package Evolution Issues. Problems in this category arise due to incorrect or outdated meta-data. 5. Spurious Conflicts: The last category represents cases where two packages are incorrectly classified as conflicting, although there is no conflict, at least not for the current version of these packages.
The resolution of these conflicts is different for each option. For example, the study [20] proposes an approach based on pre-trained language models to detect conflicts in software.
In the future, we will consider the confrontation between the software responsible for the operation of the product and the software responsible for the protection of information.
The authors of the study [21], characterizing these types of conflicts, proposed four types: 1. IS implementation process conflicts. 2. IS task conflicts. 3. IS structure conflicts. 4. IS value conflicts.
This study emphasizes that the types of information security conflicts that arise are based not only on the technical and functional characteristics of the system but also on insights gained from actual interaction with the new technology in specific organizational settings.
Information conflict in cyber security systems is usually related to ensuring the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of information.
Access control is a fundamental element of cybersecurity that allows you to determine who can access certain data, applications, and resources, and under what conditions. The simplest form of access control is identifying a user based on his credentials and then granting him the appropriate level of permissions [22]. A restriction conflict is a mismatch between an access control policy and the restrictions defined to restrict that policy. For example, a policy that allows an object with high integrity to access data with low integrity violates an integrity constraint. Constraint conflicts differ from typical policy conflicts in that the constraints must never be violated. That is, a conflict with a constraint results in a policy compilation error, while policy conflicts are resolved at runtime [23].
The emergence of an information conflict in software is possible as a result of the implementation of a threat (malware), which affects the functioning of the information system. Our comparison in the previous section presents that there is a limited available methodology to observe and provide requirement engineering to security and privacy together and there are no widely acceptable tools to help design and engineering privacy. there are also no specific techniques to deal with identifying and implementing privacy requirements [24].
Article [25] presents the definition of a conflict situation at this level, as conflict situations are such state of the system in which the possibility of correctly performing at least one of the system tasks (access control, information transfer, encryption, generation, and verification of the signature) due to external influence, or internal failures, errors or failure of software or algorithmic support is excluded. Conventionally, conflict situations can be divided into three categories as a result of: • Distortion of the input (received) data stream (documents). • Changes in the system functioning through external intervention (unauthorized access, intentional changes in software, or algorithmic support of the system). • Distortion of the system functions when the input data flow changes (viruses, Trojan horses, errors, and software bookmarks).
It is known that installing two antivirus programs can also interfere with each other’s work and cause a conflict, as one program may see the other as malware. 2.4. Information Conflict Between Software and Hardware Information Protection Hardware and software are two interconnected and complementary elements of an information system. Information processing hardware is a complex of technical means, the components of which are electronic and electronic computing devices necessary for the functioning of the information system, software is a set of programs of the information processing system and program documents necessary for the operation of these programs. Without software, hardware is useless; and without hardware, software cannot run. From the point of view of information security, this part has the largest number of information conflicts. Thus, a malicious touch screen can record user actions, monitor the phone and install applications, direct the user to phishing websites, and exploit vulnerabilities in the operating system kernel to gain privileged control over the device [26].
Information conflicts between software and hardware are closely related to information conflicts in EW.
The modern state gave an impetus to the development of UAVs. Fig. 3 shows the basic model of the UAV and highlights information risks that create conflict situations between software and hardware. Information leakage: possible through ground controls (computer, programs, media, smartphone, tablet); through attacks on the source of supply; in foreignmade drones, the user does not have the opportunity to track the transmission of information to the manufacturer’s servers, which contributes to the violation of information confidentiality.
The solution of such conflicts is proposed in
works [
Encoder/ decoder
Control system (computer, tablet, smartphone) Risk 1
This study is an attempt to carry out a possible classification of information conflicts in the “object—object” perspective in information and cyber security systems. Information technologies are developing very rapidly, so this problem will always be relevant and is obvious, often not solved.
Modeling situations of conflict interaction
between the components of the information
system allows us to predict fundamental
changes in the development of the system to
effectively manage this system. No matter what
informational conflicts exist between system
components, ensuring the desired strategy
depends on human actions [
The vector of further research is planned to be directed to the modeling of conflict resolution scenarios from an “object—object” perspective in information and cyber security systems based on the analysis of existing approaches in the scientific literature. Model in Information Systems of Potential Implications for Deterrence, Situational Center, in: Workshop on Stability, and Strategic Surprise, Center Emerging Technology Trends on the for Global Security Research Lawrence Smart Industry and the Internet of Livermore National Laboratory (2019).
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