National Security and International Policy Challenges in a Post Stuxnet World

Abstract

The international community has focused too much on addressing cybercrime and cyber hacktivist questions. The list of usual suspects responsible for cyber incidents associated with attacks involving the theft of intellectual property, sensitive private data, money and disruption of web services unfortunately has grown beyond the attention seeking student hacker, cybercriminal or social hacktivist. The public appearance of the Stuxnet family of malware designed to destroy specifically targeted critical infrastructure components in June of 2010 gave perhaps the first indication that States have entered cyberspace as one of the perpetrators of malicious cyber activity. The problem of States actively preparing and executing cyber-attacks against the critical infrastructures of other States has been largely ignored by the international community. These attacks raise national security issues concerning threats to the economic and social well-being of States. However the pervasive presence of cyber space as the common environment where all modern industrial processes take place and the interrelations developed among the critical infrastructure of other States raise cross-border security issues as well. The international community must act in order to insure that the use of this new weapon by States will not get out of hand and be the cause of new and more serious international conflicts. Three solutions and a possible model are proposed to manage this disruptive activity of States in cyberspace at the international level.