International Regulation of Cyber-Warfare

Several experts in cyber-security, cyber-intelligence, cyber-warfare and cyber-terrorism gathered in 2013 at an event entitled “International Regulation of Cyber-Warfare”. The fact that the current framework of international law is silent on the concept of cyber-warfare was criticized my many; demanding a regulation of cyber weapons.

The main question remains how exactly the law should be applied to cyber operations. Many referred to the “Tallinn Manual”, created by a group of experts on cyber security, as a possible option for how international law applies to cyberspace. In this manual, several factors that play an important role in classifying a happening in cyberspace as a cyber-attack are elaborated.

Several difficulties that could arise from applying international law to cyber warfare were equally discussed. As an example for this, the discrimination between civilians and combatants was mentioned as being problematic, as this would require that the attack be carried out against a specific group of IP addresses. The requirement of combatants wearing a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance would equally be difficult to meet.

Even so, cyber war now poses a real threat to national security with rising number of cyber-attacks carried out by an increasing variety of actors, including hackers, spies, companies and states.

The experts then discussed the definition of cyber weapons in order to create the possibility of applying international law to their use. They mentioned that cyber weapons must be deployed within the context f a cyber-warfare act, that the purpose of the cyber-attack must be a physical destruction or damage caused directly or indirectly and that the means to achieve this outcome have to involve technological information systems. A cyber weapon is therefore a device of computer instructions used in a conflict between national or non-national actors, with the purpose of causing physical damage to people or equipment.

Even though the event continued with mentions of legal and non-legal nature, underlining the interest of the participants in a regulation of cyber weapons, no decision on how law could be applied was made.

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