The Ethics of Cyber Attack: Pursuing Legitimate Security and the Common Good in Contemporary Conflict Scenarios

ABSTRACT

Cyber attack against Critical National Infrastructure is a developing capability in state arsenals. The onset of this new instrument in national security has implications for conflict thresholds and military ethics. To serve as a legitimate tool of policy, cyber attack must operate in accordance with moral concerns. To test the viability of cyber attack, this paper provides a new perspective on cyber ethics. Cyber attack is tested against the criteria of the common good. This involves identifying the four core components of the common good from a conflict perspective: respect for the person; social wellbeing; peace and security; and solidarity. The fate of these components is assessed in relation to the six key characteristics of cyber attack from a moral standpoint: security; the role or absence of violence; discrimination; proportionality; cyberharm; and the threshold of conflict. It is concluded that the common good must be incorporated into developing state cyber strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyber attack
• cyber strategies
• conflict thresholds
• military ethics
• common good

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

David J. Lonsdale is a Senior Lecturer in War and Security Studies and the Director of the Centre for Security Studies at the University of Hull, UK. He served on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Academic Network on Future Conflict and Cyber Security. His main areas of research are strategic studies and military history. His publications include Understanding Contemporary Strategy (with Thomas M. Kane, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2019), “Nuclear Strategy and Catholicism: A Reappraisal” (Journal of Military Ethics, 2012), “Britain’s Emerging Cyber Strategy” (The RUSI Journal, 2016), and “Warfighting for Cyber Deterrence: A Strategic and Moral Imperative” (Philosophy and Technology, 2018).

Notes

1 The security challenge is only going to increase with the development of “the Internet of things,” “next billion users” and increasing exploitation of “zero-day exploits.”

2 Notable exceptions being Orend 2016 and a Master’s thesis, Cisneros 2015.

3 This is evident, for example, in the UK’s 2017 warning to Russia that Britain would respond to cyber intrusions with retaliatory cyber attacks, see Groves 2017. Coercion via cyber attack is discussed in Borghard and Lonergan 2017.

4 The latter has been reaffirmed by UK Defense Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, see Farmer 2017.