The United States is increasingly dependent on information and information technology for both civilian and military purposes, as are many other nations. Although there is a substantial literature on the potential impact of a cyberattack on the societal infrastructure of the United States, little has been written about the use of cyberattack as an instrument of U.S. policy. Cyberattacks--actions intended to damage adversary computer systems or networks--can be used for a variety of military purposes. But they also have application to certain missions of the intelligence community, such as covert action. They may be useful for certain domestic law enforcement purposes, and some analysts believe that they might be useful for certain private sector entities who are themselves under cyberattack. This report considers all of these applications from an integrated perspective that ties together technology, policy, legal, and ethical issues. Focusing on the use of cyberattack as an instrument of U.S. national policy, Technology, Policy, Law and Ethics Regarding U.S. Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities explores important characteristics of cyberattack. It describes the current international and domestic legal structure as it might apply to cyberattack, and considers analogies to other domains of conflict to develop relevant insights. Of special interest to the military, intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security communities, this report is also an essential point of departure for nongovernmental researchers interested in this rarely discussed topic.
Cited By
- Pipyros K, Thraskias C, Mitrou L, Gritzalis D and Apostolopoulos T (2018). A new strategy for improving cyber-attacks evaluation in the context of Tallinn Manual, Computers and Security, 74:C, (371-383), Online publication date: 1-May-2018.
- Lin P, Allhoff F and Rowe N (2012). War 2.0, Communications of the ACM, 55:3, (24-26), Online publication date: 1-Mar-2012.
- Lin H (2012). Why computer scientists should care about cyber conflict and U.S. national security policy, Communications of the ACM, 55:6, (41-43), Online publication date: 1-Jun-2012.
- Caballero J, Poosankam P, McCamant S, Babi ć D and Song D Input generation via decomposition and re-stitching Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer and communications security, (413-425)
- Moore T, Friedman A and Procaccia A Would a 'cyber warrior' protect us Proceedings of the 2010 New Security Paradigms Workshop, (85-94)
- Amin S, Schwartz G and Sastry S Security interdependencies for networked control systems with identical agents Proceedings of the First international conference on Decision and game theory for security, (107-122)
- Denning P and Denning D (2010). Discussing cyber attack, Communications of the ACM, 53:9, (29-31), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2010.
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