1 November 2011
On the opening day of the London conference on cyber security organised by the UK Government, Dr Marco Roscini, Reader in International Law at the University of Westminster, says cyber warfare is potentially as serious a threat to the UK as any other armed attack
“Most experts see cyberspace as tomorrow’s theatre of war but, in the absence of specific international legal rules on cyber warfare, we are left with very little guidance as to how to deal with a cyber attack originating from other states. Globally, government computer networks are targeted virtually every day and sensitive data has been stolen, yet there is still no agreement on what ‘national critical infrastructures’ are and global policies need to be put into place to address this, and ways to tackle the growing problem.
“As the vast majority of critical infrastructures are privately owned in the UK, we need to ask whether a cyber attack incapacitating the computer network of a national critical infrastructure in the UK could be considered an attack on the UK as a state, triggering, among others, the UK’s right to self-defence. It has for instance been claimed in the past that, as Google is the most powerful presence on the Internet, an attack on it would be seen as an attack on the US.
“Cyber attacks don’t employ traditional weapons, but in this day and age there is no reason why only those attacks involving physical weapons with explosive effects should be treated, potentially, as an act of war. The use of other non-kinetic dual-use weapons, such as chemical and bacteriological, would undoubtedly be treated as an ‘armed’ attack and a cyber attack should not be treated any differently should the consequences be comparable.”
