New Dimensions of Information Warfare: The Economic Pillar—Fintech and Cryptocurrencies

The fast-paced technological advancements of the last decades have led to digitizing an ever-increasing amount of information, processes, and activities. A wide range of new digital devices have made our lives easier, faster, and funnier, quickly becoming indispensable for both work and daily life. As a result, the digital realm has dramatically expanded its boundaries, replacing the physical world in several areas. Information warfare has found fertile ground to expand into this modernized electronic world, creating new scenarios and novel attacks on nations and citizens’ virtual perimeter. The economic sector plays an essential role in this context, widely affected and profoundly changed by recent technological advancements. For instance, the rapid rise of fintech systems, on the one hand, has led to the globalization of markets, with evident benefits on industries and tertiary services. On the other hand, the financial sector’s dependence on digital systems and information has increased dramatically, also introducing new digital risks. This paper explores the new threats opened up by the latest technological advancements to the national economy of a typical developed Country. After identifying two of the major targets of information warfare – cryptocurrencies and stock markets – we investigate possible attacks and evaluate their potential repercussions on the national economy, also highlighting promising avenues for future research and experimentation.