War Crimes from Cyberweapons

Abstract

As information warfare capabilities have grown in recent years, the possibilities of war crimes with cyberattacks have increased. The main ethical problems of cyberweapons in regard to ruses, secrecy, and collateral damage are examined, and analogies drawn to biological weapons. It argues that most cyberattacks are instances of perfidy, and spread so easily that they can approach biological weapons in their uncontrollability. Then mitigation techniques for cyberweapons in the form of more precise targeting, reversibility, and self-attribution are considered. The paper concludes with a survey of some methods for prosecution and punishment of cyberwar crimes including forensics, interventions, cyberblockades, and reparations, and propose a new kind of pacifism called 'cyber-pacifism'.