The Ethics of Cyberattack

Abstract

The internet has made it possible to do damage at a distance by the use of networked computers. A deliberate act doing such damage may be referred to as a cyberattack. My concern in this essay is the ethics or morality of cyberattack as a part of war. The morality of war or military attacks in general is judged in terms of just war theory, which examines war in its two aspects, the morality of going to war (jus ad bellum) and the morality of conduct in war (jus in bello). I examine the morality of cyberattacks in each of these areas. My conclusion is that, while the use of cyberattacks is a novel form of conflict in many ways, its ethical dimensions can for the most part be understood in terms of the traditional categories of just war theory. There remains, however, an important aspect of cyberattack that may carry us beyond the limits of traditional just war thinking about war.