Given a hacker collective of sufficient size, know-how, resources and time, perhaps. (Even though they might end up destroying half of civilization themselves i

Given a hacker collective of sufficient size, know-how, resources and time, perhaps. (Even though they might end up destroying half of civilization themselves in the process...) Seriously, no. Aside from the fact that war is in essence a social problem that cannot solely be solved by technical means (see afarrell's earlier post), cyber warfare is an incredibly advanced area of conflict. What makes it so complex is not only the skill needed for the creation of the utilized malware itself, but also all the military intelligence that is needed to sabotage specific physical targets. (I am presuming here that anybody wanting to stop WW3 would have to knock out command posts, communication lines, missile launchers and other weapon systems, etc.) The classic example is, of course, Stuxnet, the first "supervirus" ever found. Discovered in 2010, it was aimed at the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. The Symantec people who analysed it estimate that development time would have been approx. half a year and would have required a full mockup of the Natanz target for testing purposes. Obviously, Iran doesn't make the design plans of their nuclear facilities public, so extensive espionage work must have been carried out beforehand. On a side note, Stuxnet also exploited four separate Windows Zero-Days. (For more details, see the official report at http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_dossier.pdf http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/secur...) My point is: attacking physical targets with computer-based attacks requires a lot of forethought, know-how and intelligence - on a scale that only large nation states are able to furnish. And don't forget, to prevent WW3, it isn't enough to just take down a few targets. You need to make sure that every last one of those nuclear subs keeps its missiles in check...