Collateral Cyber Damage

If you’re calmly reading this in a warm, dry, safe space before or after a regular meal – chances are one or all of these seminal documents let you take those human rights for granted today:

·      Magna Carta

·      US Constitution

·      Fourth Geneva Convention

However, none of these documents can protect your civilian rights online and IRL during our current Cyber Wars. Iran may dominate the headlines this week, but Russia, China and North Korea are also in active Cyber Combat against G7 countries, as well as against themselves. Saudi Arabia and Israel are likewise under attack by Iran, and counter attacking as a result.

#WWIII

This hashtag was trending ironically the past few days, but with at least 13 counties listed above in active cyber combat, it’s fair to argue World War 3 is already upon us. We can be grateful the nuclear combat scenario is not how WWIII played out, but that’s no excuse to relax. The collateral cyber damage already suffered last decade is set to significantly increase throughout the 2020s. Cyber warfare collateral damage and cyber crime will not only increasingly disrupt our lives and businesses, but collectively represent direct threats to our physical safety as well. Cyber Terrorism Attacks on power grids, utilities, land and air traffic control systems, hospitals and other essential services we rely on will become regular events this decade. The dominant question remains – will these respective targeted organizations be able to detect and mitigate those attacks?

Cyber Futility?

Cyber warfare’s digital realities make the weapon development, reverse engineering and counter-deployment cycle agile, meaning what took years or decades for kinetic weapons to be available to adversaries, takes weeks or months in the cyber domain. The other new element of danger is the role of cyber arms dealers. They can easily copy (steal) leading cyber weapons deployed by any nation state combatant in cyber warfare, then adapt and resell them on the Dark Web to organized crime. As a rapidly evolving innovative industry, Cyber Crime sometimes vertically integrates many of those functions for faster time to market.

The overwhelming competitive advantage which military-grade cyber weapons offer cyber criminals against their private sector, municipal and business victims, explains the ludicrous profits which attract and power the vicious, accelerating cyber attack cycle we’re witnessing at the turn of a new decade. Solving the intertwined geopolitical and criminal trends involved will not be easy or quick, but historical examples such as the Fourth Geneva Convention provide a framework for us to follow.

Cyber Bill of Rights – Next Geneva Convention?

Digital rights advocacy groups have historically been focused on universal internet access and user privacy. We now need their experience and expertise aligned with global diplomatic agencies to collectively focus governments and international standards organizations on cyber safety and associated physical safety laws with respective regulatory enforcement agencies.

Will we see all of this come to pass? Will we need additional war or crime-inspired catalysts to drive action? Or like Climate Change, will this devolve into industrial complex lobbying vs our next-gen human rights? That my dear reader who has made it this far, is up to you.