# Cyber Conflicts as a New Global Threat
## Results
### The Social Element of Cyber Conflict
Despite this, the application of social MCCs is not widely considered; however, there is open source information that the main competitors in cyberspace already have corresponding systems at their disposal. Between February-March 2011, mass media published information that the United States Department of The Air Force in June 2010 placed an order for \"persona management software\" for 50 users, each of which will manage 10 personas. According to published information, each persona should have \"background, history, supporting details, and cyber presence that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms. The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information\" [19]. In August 2012, a Russian newspaper \"Kommersant\" published an article alleging that in January 2012 the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation announced three \"closed\" tenders for the development of special software solutions with code designations \"Dispute\", \"Monitor-3\", and \"Storm-12\" [20]. The purpose of the \"Dispute\" system was described as \"research processes of formation of communities of information dissemination internet-centers in social networks\" so as to \"determine factors of information popularity and distribution\". System \"Monitor-3\" should be created to ensure the \"development of methods of organization and management of virtual internet community of involved experts, covering assignment of tasks, control of operation in social media and regular obtainment of information in specified fields from involved experts.\" Finally, system \"Storm-12\" would be \"a special software package of automated dissemination of information in large social networks and organization of informational support of measures according to prepared scenarios of influence on specified mass audience of social networks\". Information regarding both the American and the Russian solutions is very basic, but nevertheless it is important as a declaration of interest to the application of such systems. Similar but maybe less-advanced systems are already used by large corporations (e.g., social media command centers) and owners of social bot networks for social media monitoring and \"promotion\" of information. As recent studies show, even the manipulation of the functionality of a web service could inflict serious social effect (like how manipulations of the Facebook information feed caused \"massive-scale emotional contagion\" [21]). The fact that both solutions were ordered from private companies also confirms the threat of potential wide involvement of non-state actors to both technical and social elements of CCs. The cases of the application of social MCCs are very rarely considered, because effects of their application are difficult to identify and measure. Nevertheless, there is open source information about such cases. One of them is \"social cyber-attack\" during the violent events in Assam (India) in July 2012 according to the research by [PERSON] [22]. Then-unknown persons exploited the high velocities and trusted nature of cyber communications to embed false information in message flows in order to foment strife and undermine stability. The author does not give any details on the mechanism of the attack, but the fact that those events were recognized as \"social cyber attack\" is very important. It is apparent that social MCCs are dynamic, hardly traceable, clandestine, and offensive in their nature. Their worst threat is that unlike technical MCCs, their effect could have a strategic significance which is hardly predictable, unlikely scalable, and barely controllable--even in the case of insignificant (at first sight) application.