'At Light Speed' - Attribution and Response to Cybercrime/Terrorism/Warfare

Abstract

Nation-states utilize a two-pronged approach for maintaining social order: They use military forces to fend off external threats (warfare) from other nation-states; and they use a set of civil and criminal laws, the latter enforced by law enforcement officers and a set of legal procedures for sanctioning violators, to maintain internal order. Both crime and terrorism fall into the category of internal threat - crime. Cyberspace challenges nation-states' ability to utilize this scheme effectively because it becomes difficult to parse the nation of an attack (attack-attribution) and to identify attackers (attacker-attribution). It also creates problems in responding to threats (military for external threats, law enforcement for internal) because territorial borders become permeable. This article explores the legal and analytical challenges arising from the attack-attribution, attacker-attribution and response processes.

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