Cyber Warfare Now Has a Manual

09/04/12

While treaties, pacts, and agreements like the Geneva Convention exist between countries with respect to conventional warfare, cyber warfare conducted between countries is a new phenomenon and largely unregulated. The Tallinn Manual is a response to the gap and has been written by experts from Australia, Canada, U.S., Netherlands, and the U.K., under the aegis of the Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, based in Tallinn, Estonia.


The 215-page manual , called the “Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare” has been published by the Cambridge University Press, and is one of the first and most authoritative references for legal advisers and those involved in the application of international law on cyberattacks. The manual examines current international law regarding the use of force by one nation against another and the laws governing armed conflict between nations in relation to cyber warfare.

A recent notable mention of such cyber warfare conducted with sovereign approval includes the Stuxnet malware offensive against Iran. In June, the New York Times reported that Stuxnet, jointly developed by U.S. and Israel has been able to damage Iran's uranium refinement capabilities. Security researchers around the world believe, that besides cyberterrorists, bona fide governments have also developed cyber-war capacity and malware designed to incapacitate and infiltrate computer networks in enemy states.

In the manual's introduction, Michael N. Schmitt, the project director and chairman at the International Law Department of the U.S. Naval War College, writes, “One of the challenges states face in the cyber environment is that the scope and manner of international law's applicability to cyber operations where in offense or defense has remained unsettled since their advent … The threshold questions are whether the existing law applies to cyber issues at all, and, if so, how.”

The matter of cyber warfare between nations is still in unclear territory – attribution is next to impossible unless one nation claims responsibility, and the questions of one nation assisting another or opposing another in case of cyber wars remains undefined.

However, there is no doubt that developed and developing nations spend millions and billions of dollars on systems of
cyberdefense and cyberoffense, and there was need of a constructive manual that collects and refers to available cases and precedents, and also attempts to lay guidelines, though not officially recognized by the U.N. But, then, the U.N. or any other institution has not yet developed any such manual, and until then the Tallinn Manual remains an indispensable reference.