A primer on the proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities Issue Brief by Winnona DeSombre, Michele Campobasso, Dr. Luca Allodi, Dr. James Shires, JD Work, Robert Morgus, Patrick Howell O’Neill, and Dr. Trey Herr Executive summary Offensive cyber capabilities run the gamut from sophisticated, long-term disruptions of physical infrastructure to malware used to target human rights journalists. As these capabilities continue to proliferate with increasing complexity and to new types of actors, the imperative to slow and counter their spread only strengthens. But to confront this growing menace, practitioners and policy makers must understand the processes and incentives behind it. The issue of cyber capability proliferation has often been presented as attempted export controls on intrusion software, creating a singular emphasis on malware components. This primer reframes the narrative of cyber capability proliferation to be more in line with the life cycle of cyber operations as a whole, presenting five pillars of offensive cyber capability: