The UN are clueless, and too late, as P2P, and DDoS, amply illustrate.

Properly secured organisations, including personal behaviour, are the only solution, and that will not happen due to cost, inconvenience, and stupidity. Just look at the hassle the "Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)" is for retail businesses, how some big businesses ignore it, and how backward bank security still is, e.g. no PKI and encryption signatures, for end-to-end payment card transaction data, WTF!

A pure communication blackout (e.g. DoS or DDoS) could seriously reduce the response times of an organisation and block access to vital resources.

A intrusion crack attack could disable, damage, or destroy physical resources, even living people.

An even more effective offensive strategy can be found in the book "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez; in this scenario living people are compelled to cooperate with a distributed internet based corporate entity, even kill for it.

In the last instance, you would have to physical search for, isolate, sanitise, and secure of all computers, networks, and people(!), everywhere! Unfortunately lack of sufficient resources, security and coordination, and the presence of hostile/hidden wireless networks and agents, could easily wreck that strategy.

"such a battle would allow weaker adversaries to fight on a level playing field with larger powers." .... Goliath meets David.

""The next world war could happen in cyberspace and that would be a catastrophe. We have to make sure that all countries understand that in that war, there is no such thing as a superpower," Toure said according to AFP."

Quite so, but there would be Grand Masters with superpowers..... but Mastery of Unbelievable Power Control with Sublime Applications of Prime Stealth for Purging Sick Systems is always with AI a Dynamic Viral Work and ZerodDay Business Traders Art in Progress.

What damage is done by a catastophe in cyberspace? Are Earth Systems destroyed by negative destructive imagination shared in virtual environments?

You might like to consider some CyberIntelAIgent Security Operations Centres to ensure that just necessary damage is sustained.

Assuming the article is true, the scariest part is that the UN is being run by morons that actually think they know anything at all about the internet, network security, and software. Here's a hint - they don't.

"The angel scrolled his mouse on the active window, zipped its trojans and threw them into the great world wide web of OS's wrath. They were forwarded in the subnets outside the DNS, and big brother's cousin thriced-removed, his Java flowed out of the Internet, rising as high as the mouse's optical."

How many punters will die at the BSOD?

In case of panic, pull the plug. Simple.

Duh... Stop using LoseDoze!