Book Review - Research handbook on International Law and Cyberspace

Abstract

A quarter of a century ago, it had already become trite to suggest that cyberspace knew no boundaries. Subsequent developments have hardly challenged this assertion. Recent years have seen a wide variety of questionable cross-border digital activities by a diverse range of actors. In 2000, a 15-year-old Canadian boy engineered distributed denial of service attacks against major e-retailers in the United States. A succession of transnational child pornography rings continue to exchange images of abused children. Thriving online markets facilitate international trade in malicious software and credit card details. Sophisticated criminal gangs operating from the other side of the globe have engaged in fraud against financial institutions and their customers. U.S. and Israeli security services have disrupted Iranian nuclear enrichment operations. In retaliation, Iranian hackers have attacked financial institutions and have allegedly infiltrated the control system of a small dam near New York City. Officers of the People’s Liberation Army have engaged in global economic espionage. Russian “patriotic hackers” have degraded communications and information systems in Estonia and elsewhere. Russian agents attacked the servers of the Democratic National Committee prior to the 2016 US presidential election. One could go on.

Activities such as these raise a spate of difficult issues. First and foremost is that of attribution ̵̶ determining the identity and location of the offender. This may require the assistance of authorities in the jurisdiction from which the offending conduct appears to have been initiated. Suffice it to say that the requisite cooperation is not always forthcoming. Indeed, states themselves may be the source of the problem, rather than any solution. In the absence of such cooperation, does the jurisdiction against which the offending activity was targeted have any recourse?