Category Archives: war crimes

If Russia was indeed behind the recent destructive malware attack known as Petya, then it should be considered a war crime, according to the lead author of the definitive guide to international law in cyber conflict. Even though no one was injured or killed, they very easily could have been; the attackers appear to have targeted civilian infrastructure including hospitals and power companies; and they did so with an indiscriminate weapon, argues Prof. Michael Schmitt of the U.S. Naval War College, and lead author of the Tallinn Manual, in an article posted on the European Journal of International Law. But the reasoning only holds if Moscow was behind the attack — because Russia is already engaged in an armed conflict, albeit undeclared, with Ukraine, the nation originally targeted by the malware. Petya on its own isn’t be a big enough attack to count as a “use of force” in international law. “A threshold question is, ‘Is the […]

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