Security News > 2011 > February > World leaders meet to discuss cyberwar rules of engagement

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/04/cyberwar_rules_of_engagement/ By John Leyden The Register 4th February 2011 Rules of engagement for the deployment of cyber-weapons need to be developed, an international security conference is due to be told later today. The influential EastWest Institute is due to present proposals for the cyberspace equivalent of the Geneva convention at the Munich Security Conference, which has included a debate on cyber-security on its agenda for the first time this year. Delegates to the conference include UK Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The discussion on rules for cyber-conflict follows months after the infamous Stuxnet worm was blamed for infecting industrial control systems and sabotaging centrifuges at controversial Iranian nuclear facilities. Some have described the malware as the world's first cyber-weapon though cyber-espionage in many guises has undoubtedly been practiced by intelligence agencies across the world for many years. Computer systems underpin the delivery of essential services, including utilities and telecoms and well as banking and government services. Critical national infrastructure systems are most commonly privately held, at least in the US and Europe. Although attacks against various critical systems are commonplace they tend to be low level information-stealing or denial of service exploits. Many independent experts in cyber-security dismiss talk of cyberwar as hype – driven more by the marketing departments of US security contractor giants seeking a new market in cyberspace than by reality on the ground. [...]

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/04/cyberwar_rules_of_engagement/