Challenges in Monitoring Cyberarms Compliance

2. Approach

What can be done against such threats then? We believe that countries must negotiate international agreements similar to those for nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Such agreements (treaties, conventions, protocols, and memoranda of understanding) (Croft, 1996) can stipulate the ways in which cyberweapons can be used, as for instance stipulating that countries use cyberweapons only in a counterattack to a cyberattack. Agreements can also stipulate policing of citizens such as “hacker” groups within a country, so that a nation cannot shift blame for cyberattacks and cyberweapons onto them. A few such agreements are in place today for cybercrime, but the growing threat suggests that it is time to plan out what such agreements will entail and how they should be enforced. As an example, the EastWest Institute in the U.S. recently proposed a cyberwar “Geneva Convention” (Rooney, 2011). Deterrence, a key aspect of nuclear weapons control, is not possible with cyberweapons because revealing capabilities significantly impedes their effectiveness.