PROHIBITION OF USE OF FORCE AND CYBER OPERATIONS AS “FORCE”

Abstract

Technology have become core element of the critical infrastructures that maintain communities’ vital services. While this situation facilitates the daily life of the societies, systems running online are exposed to risks from vulnerabilities based on internet and systems. Increasing cyber-attacks, especially between countries in governmental level, created a new term “cyber warfare”. As in all the evolutions of the war, the concept of cyber warfare also needs original rules due to its unique characteristics. International society has divided into two groups. First group claims that existing conflict rules should apply this new battle field and the other group says the situation requires a new consensus. The purpose of this study is to examine the scope of the prohibition and to explain exceptions, by examining the developed approaches for establishing the conditions for the use of force in cyber operations, highlighting the most appropriate evaluation criteria with emphasizing existing limitations. In the light of the data collected, the literature was searched exhaustively to achieve this aim. What characteristics cyber-operations should have and objective approaches that we can use for the assessment and we can suppose as use of force will be also discussed.

Keywords

• Cyber warfare
• cyber operation
• prohibition of use of force
• right to self-defense