Crossing the Line: When Cyberattacks Become Acts of War

The Cold War concept isn’t outdated. In the decades since the fall of the Soviet Union, the battleground has simply shifted from conflicts between ideological proxy governments to cyberspace. And the opponents have grown from a few primary nations into a broad range of sovereign threat actors. The question is, when does a cyberattack cross the line between a criminal action or mere prank, to an act of war? Is it the nature of the victim? The nature of the attacker? The nature of the damage? Or a combination of them all? To be sure, this is not a determination for cybersecurity professionals to make. Our role is to defend IT assets for our organizations by reducing risk, mitigating threats, remediating the situation after an attack, and generally trying to keep everything running safely and smoothly. It doesn’t matter whether we are facing a script kiddie trying to deface a website, a political hacktivist trying to make a statement, a cybercriminal trying to steal or ransom our data, or a state actor trying to steal confidential information. Our goal is to keep them out, and minimize the damage when they do manage to get in. The only thing that changes is how well-resourced and tenacious our opponents are. Defining an Act of War Oxford’s Reference Dictionary defines an act of war as: “An act by one nation intended to initiate or provoke a war with another nation; an act considered sufficient cause for war.” That’s a good definition, but it leaves some ambiguity when applied…

Source