NATO cyberwar directive declares hackers military targets

As the United States and its adversaries move from using missiles to malware on its targets, a group of specialists have drafted preliminary guidelines for the world’s ramped-up cyberwars.

The rule book published this week, The Tallinn Manual on International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare, was curated by NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence and calls upon two dozen experts from around the world to help lay the groundwork for cyberwar guidelines as attacks aimed at computer grids, networks and systems increasingly become the target of foreign agents.

Michael Schmitt, a professor with the US Naval War College and the editor of the manual, told the Associated Press before publication that the guidelines come at a time when few laws formally exist governing the use of so-called cyberweapons. Just like bombs and missiles, hackers and state-sponsored parties can use malicious code to wipe out entire databases, break down machinery and otherwise render enter infrastructures useless.

"Everyone was seeing the Internet as the 'Wild, Wild, West,'" Schmitt told the AP. "What they had forgotten is that international law applies to cyberweapons like it applies to any other weapons."

In order to bring a bit more structure, Schmitt and roughly two dozen others from law schools and militaries around the world met in the Estonian city of Tallinn during the last three years to try and at least set up some sort of rules that might be adopted. For now, though, the Tallinn Manual is nothing more than a collection of suggestions that Schmitt and company would like nations around the world to heed as recommendations.

more here: http://rt.com/usa/nato-publishes-cyberwar-guidelines-502/