Cyber Warfare

The recent “NotPetya” cyber-operation illustrates the complexity of applying international law to factually ambiguous cyber scenarios. Manifestations of NotPetya began to surface on 27 June when a major Ukrainian bank reported a sustained operation against its network. The Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure soon announced ‘an ongoing and massive attack everywhere’.  By the following day, NotPetya’s impact was…

According to open source reports, the Obama administration is considering how to retaliate against China for hacks into the US government’s Office of Personnel (OPM). Although it has hesitated to openly pin the rose on China, the reports raise questions as to how it might respond consistent with international law. The issue of responses to…

Liis Vihul is the Tallinn Manual Project Manager, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, Tallinn, Estonia. Although scholars began to assess how international law applies in the cyber context during the late 1990s, it was not until the 2007 cyber operations directed at Estonia that the international community became fully sensitised to the subject. For the first…

Dr Bill Boothby, the former Deputy Director of Legal Services for the Royal Air Force, published through OUP his doctoral thesis on Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict in 2009; he has now published his second book, again through OUP, on The Law of Targeting. This post…