INVITATION TO CYBERSECURITY 280 battle” and “right in war,” respectively. Jus ad bellum outlines the conditions for when it is justified for a state to enter into war with another state. This concept is also known as just war theory. Jus in bello outlines acceptable conduct in war and is also known as International Humanitarian Law (IHL). 10.3.3.1 International Cyber Conflict International cyber conflict has been ongoing for decades. There are many known examples of nation state-on-nation state cyber operations, but for everyone that is publicized, there are likely dozens that are not. This is due to the secret nature of cyber operations. Countries often do not acknowledge these activities whether they are the perpetrator or the victim. To help set the context for international law, this section will summarize two of the most well-known examples of cyber conflict, and even for them there remain many unanswered questions. Arguably the world’s first nation state cyber attack happened 2007 in Estonia in the aftermath of a Soviet-era statue known as the Bronze Soldier being moved to the outskirts of the capital city of Tallinn. Russians living in Estonia viewed the statue as a monument to the time when the Soviets liberated Estonia, but native Estonians viewed the statue as a monument to the time the Soviets invaded and brought their oppressive regime back to Estonia. (Estonia had gained their independence from Russia in 1918 and the Soviets returned in 1940.) The statue was a powerful symbol like statues are meant to be, and its symbolism was politically explosive. Some Russian news outlets misreported that in addition to the statue being moved to a less visible location, it had also been defaced along with the gravesites of soldiers. Passions were inflamed and riots erupted in the streets. Meanwhile in cyberspace, Tallinn began to be subject to a relentless barrage of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Estonia, contrary to what many might believe, was one of the most technologically reliant nations in the world at that time. The DDoS attacks made online banking and commerce nearly impossible and shut the city government down. The ordeal lasted over twenty days. Some high-level government officials in Russia allegedly helped to incite the riot by making inflammatory comments, but the Russian government claimed no responsibility for the incident. It is likely that patriotic hacking did occur (e.g., private Russian citizens engaged in military-style cyber operations). This gave the Russian government plausible deniability because they could acknowledge that attacks were coming from Russia but deny that they were sanctioned. It is difficult to determine to what extent this behavior was condoned or possibly funded by the Russian government. This is a crucial difference between physical space and cyberspace conflict—a relatively small group of loosely connected civilians with no chain of command could plausibly pull off an attack that could cripple a nation. This would be unimaginable in conventional warfare because of the high costs and complex logistics involved.
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