title: Digital Dictators: How Different Types of Authoritarian Regimes Use Cyber Attacks to Legitimize Their Rule
abstract: As states and populations around the world have become increasingly interconnected and dependent on digitized technologies and cyberspace, threat actors have been aggressively exploiting these changes to their own advantage. Of particular concern to academics, cyber experts and national security practitioners in the West, has been the rapid proliferation of damaging and disruptive cyber attacks carried out by state-actors - particularly authoritarian regimes - and their proxies. Despite global c