The Normative Framework of the State’s Right of Self-Defense as a Response to Cyber Attack

• Main Authors: CHENG, YI-WEN, 程詒文
• Other Authors: TIEN, LI-PIN
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2019
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/836597

碩士 === 國防大學 === 法律學系 === 107 === Awareness has been growing in recent years that modern societies, increasingly Internet-dependent, are highly vulnerable to malicious intrusion into their computers and Internet. The reality of cyber attacks have already proven remarkably threatened, which can cause physical damage and human casualties. As a result, the issues of whether cyber attacks meet the threshold of UN Charter Article 2(4) needs to be taken into consideration. This article addresses the jus ad bellum examining cyber attacks as prohibited acts under the laws governing the resort to force and qualifying the specific characteristics which can be considered as a use of force contrary to Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Nine factors are to be taken into account when determining whether an attack will constitute a use of force: severity, immediacy, directness, invasiveness, measurability of effects, military character, state involvement, presumptive legality and target. As the criteria has been reached, such attack constitutes a use of force which breaches the prohibition against force in international law. The article also examines the attribution of attacks and the right of states to take countermeasures against non-state actor, including compensation and self-defense regulated in the UN Charter Article 51. Therefore, when the scale and effects of an attack rises to the level of an armed attack, a state may exercise its inherent right of self-defense. As a cyber attack occurs and accompanies with the requirement of imminence and immediacy, a state has the right to use force as anticipatory self-defense.