Page 27 - CDM Cyber Warnings November 2013

 Cyber Sabotage: A person, group or state who disrupts or damages public or private
entities through the medium of cyberspace.

 Cyber Crime: A person, group or state who engages in sinister cyber activity out with
agreed sovereign and international law through the medium of cyberspace.

I refer to these bespoke characterizations as Cyber TWESC. This acronym offers an explicit set

of terminology for the type of known sinister activity that can come from the fifth domain. Many
of the sanctions and consequences relating to activity nestled within these terms are not
necessarily exclusive. The reality is that each rule can, on occasion, act as a relative cause and
or consequence of another. That is to say a cyber war would most likely incorporate the acts of

cyber espionage and sabotage. Cyber TWESC gives clarity and breaks down much of the
esoteric language surrounding this emerging platform. It seeks to dissipate the confusing and ill-

thought definitions of everyday cyber discussion. This task, however, may require far less
attention. It may just need the addition of one word, ‘cyber’. (“All Members shall refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force [in all domains of warfare, including the

fifth: cyber] against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other
manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”). This is the first step in

developing a robust internationally agreed set of definitions that will help lawyers set the legal
parameters for this emerging domain.

The growing division between the accelerated evolution of computer networks and the
stagnation of policies to govern them is clear. Whilst academics such as Thomas Rid still feel “a
cyber-Hiroshima [is] highly unlikely”, no leading authority has gone so far as to discount such a

scenario, instead, realising that the wars of bullets and munitions have now been joined by an
untouchable ether and that the wars of technological intelligence have begun.

27 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – November 2013 Edition
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