CYBER-ATTACKS AS AGGRESSION CRIMES IN CYBERSPACE IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

Gianpiero Greco

Abstract


The recent situation in the world shows that cyber-attacks could be one of the most dangerous threats to international peace and security. Offensive operations in cyberspace present unique challenges to the international legal order, which are faced by the international community. While it is consensual that international law applies to cyberspace, the debate about the qualification of cyber-attacks as fundamental crimes under International Criminal Law is still ongoing and has not produced definitive answers. Addressing the implications of transnational cyber threats from the perspective of International Criminal Law will perhaps require a further amendment of the Rome Statute. After briefly illustrating how cyber-attacks are commonly linked in the debate to war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, a more detailed analysis will be devoted to the admissibility of cyber-attacks as crimes of aggression, this being the crime most recently defined and, perhaps, the most controversial.

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


International law; hacker; computer crimes; cyber warfare; cyber threats

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ambos, K. (2015). International criminal responsibility in cyberspace. In Research Handbook on International Law and Cyberspace. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Amendments to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on the Crime of Aggression (2017). Retrieved from https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/RC2010/AMENDMENTS/CN.651.2010-ENG-CoA.pdf

Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945). Retrieved from https://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/.

Chaumette, A. L. (2018). International Criminal Responsibility of Individuals in Case of Cyberattacks. International Criminal Law Review, 18, 1-35.

Faga, H. P. (2017). The implications of transnational cyber threats in international humanitarian law: analysing the distinction between cybercrime, cyber-attack, and cyber warfare in the 21st century. Baltic Journal of Law & Politics, 10(1), 1-34.

Kocibelli, A. (2017). Aggression, From Cyber-Attacks to ISIS: Why International Law Struggles to Adapt. Michigan Journal of International Law, 39.

Kreß, C., & Von Holtzendorff, L. (2010). The Kampala compromise on the crime of aggression. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 8(5), 1179-1217.

Miller, K. L. (2014). The Kampala Compromise and Cyberattacks: Can There Be an International Crime of Cyber-Aggression? Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 23, 217.

Ohlin, J. D., Govern, K., & Finkelstein, C. (Eds.). (2015). Cyber war: law and ethics for virtual conflicts. OUP Oxford.

Ophardt, J. (2010). Cyber Warfare and the Crime of Aggression: The Need for Individual Accountability on Tomorrow’s Battlefield. Duke Law & Technology Review, 3, 30.

Papanastasiou, A. (2010). Application of International Law in Cyber Warfare Operation. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1673785

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002). Retrieved from http://www.cirpac.it/pdf/testi/Statuto%20di%20Roma%20della%20Corte%20Penale%20Internazionale.pdf

Roscini, M. (2014). Cyber Operations and the Use of Force in International Law. Oxford University Press, USA.

Schmitt, M. N. (Ed.). (2017). Tallinn manual 2.0 on the international law applicable to cyber operations. Cambridge University Press.

Shackelford, S. J. (2009). From Nuclear War to Net War: Analogizing Cyber Attacks in International Law. Berkeley Journal of International Law, 27, 192-198.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 on the Definition of Aggression (1974). Retrieved from https://legal.un.org/avl/pdf/ha/da/da_ph_e.pdf

Vagias, M. (2016). The Territorial Jurisdiction of the ICC for Core Crimes Committed Through the Internet. Journal of Conflict and Security Law, 21(3), 523-540.

Whiting, A. (2017). Crime of Aggression Activated at the ICC: Does it Matter? Retrieved from https://www.justsecurity.org/49859/crime-aggression-activated-icc-matter/.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejpss.v4i1.937

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2020 Gianpiero Greco

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The research works published in this journal are free to be accessed. They can be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and\or adapted (remixed, transformed, and built upon the material for any purpose, commercially and\or not commercially) under the following terms: attribution (appropriate credit must be given indicating original authors, research work name and publication name mentioning if changes were made) and without adding additional restrictions (without restricting others from doing anything the actual license permits). Authors retain the full copyright of their published research works and cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed.

Copyright © 2017 - 2023. European Journal Of Political Science Studies (ISSN 2601-2766) is a registered trademark. All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library. All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and standards formulated by Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003) and  Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003) and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Copyrights of the published research works are retained by authors.