Following debate on this answer about what constitutes a violation of sovereignty. I'm asking this as an independent question.
Under current international law, does a cyber attack constitute as a violation of sovereignty?
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Sign up to join this communityFollowing debate on this answer about what constitutes a violation of sovereignty. I'm asking this as an independent question.
Under current international law, does a cyber attack constitute as a violation of sovereignty?
The WaPo has a good rule of thumb based upon American interpretation of international law:
The government has defined an armed attack in cyberspace as one that results in death, injury or significant destruction, as Harold Koh, the State Department’s chief legal adviser, recently put it. Here’s the rule of thumb, as Koh stated it: “If the physical consequences of a cyberattack work the kind of physical damage that dropping a bomb or firing a missile would, that cyberattack should equally be considered a use of force.” If an attack reaches those levels, then a nation has a right to act in self-defense.
A Columbian Law Professor has come to the same conclusions of equating a cyber attack effects with real life armed attacks. Same source:
Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University law professor who studies the strategic dimensions of cyberattacks, said economic damage alone traditionally does not give rise to a right of self-defense. While “the erasure of data . . . is expensive to replace,” he said, “I would not call that an armed attack.”
Note that some security officials have internal definitions of the extensiveness of damage that would be considered an act of war which they are not willing to share.