UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for global rules to minimize the impact of electronic warfare on civilians as massive cyber attacks look likely to become the first salvoes in future wars.
Computer hackers, many of them believed to be stateLibsosponsored groups, last year disrupted multinational firms, ports and public services on an unprecedented scale around the world, raising awareness of the issue.
Last week, US Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies on charges of conducting a criminal and espionage conspiracy using social media to interfere in the 2016 US election.
“Episodes of cyber warfare between states already exist. What is worse is that there is no regulatory scheme for that type of warfare, it is not clear how the Geneva Convention or international humanitarian law applies to it,” Guterres said in a speech to his alma mater, the University of Lisbon.
“I am absolutely convinced that, differently from the great battles of the past, which opened with a barrage of artillery or aerial bombardment, the next war will begin with a massive cyber attack to destroy military capacity and paralyse basic infrastructure such as the electric networks.”
