Does the world need a Geneva Convention for cyber warfare?
The joint USA-Israel-developed Stuxnet worm, which destroyed the centrifuges crucial to Iran's nuclear programme in 2007, signalled a shift in the way cyber attacks were deployed and perceived. Stuxnet was a success. It demonstrated that cyber attacks could be used to profound material impact where traditional acts of aggression did not succeed. The covert use of cyber weapons worked where sanctions and the threat of violence did not. Image: NSA headquarters, Wikimedia Commons Stuxnet was discovered three years later in 2010. Since, the capabilities of nation states, criminal gangs, and state-sponsored groups have only increased. But the rules of play could not be murkier. The Tallinn Manual In 2009, a group of cyber security experts began work on the first Tallinn Manual, a non-binding study on how international law might apply to cyber warfare. The first edition was published in 2013, and the second, the Tallinn Manual 2.0, published in February this year. The issue