There is growing talk of cyberwar, as opposed to run-of-the-mill cybercrime. There are also terms that lie somewhere in the middle like cyber espionage, and cyber hacktivism–which is sort of like cyber terrorism for good guys. At the heart of the debate is an attempt to define the scope of an appropriate response to each type of threat.Former U.S. cyber-security tsar Richard Clarke describes scenarios in his book Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It of nationwide power blackouts, poison gas clouds and burning oil refineries, aircraft dropping from the sky and crashing subways. Those are the types of attacks that would seem to clearly indicate an act of cyberwar, but there are also many nuanced attacks in between that muddy the waters.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/250308/when_is_a_cybercrime_an_act_of_cyberwar.html