Another speaker for this years Security Forum will be Robert Clark. His talk will cover the topic Cyber War/Cyber Attacks – Are They Legal?. Read the abstract here:
This talk looks at cyber war/attacks, their legality, and place in world conflict. Using open source, unclassified materials, this talk will walk through every step of offensive cyber operations using past examples. We will discuss the applicable law and what legal reviews are required. Many recent scholarly (legal) articles state that applying the law of armed conflict to computer network operations (aka the cyberspace domain) is harder and more difficult than previously done in the other physical domains (land, air, sea and space). Some even state that legal reviews are not needed for those capabilities and/or operations that do not amount to a use of force. Again, using open source unclassified material, let’s walk through the operational execution of offensive cyber operations including the required legal reviews under International Customary Law, the U.S. Constitution and U.S. laws.