The Tallinn manual on the international law applicable to cyber warfare : a brief introduction on its treatment of 𝘫𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘮 norms

Abstract

The Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare (hereinafter the ‘Tallinn Manual’) was an ambitious project taken on by a group of experts brought together at the initiative of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (hereinafter ‘NATO’) Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence based in Tallinn, Estonia. It commenced in 2009 and, after three years, the International Group of Experts (hereinafter ‘the Experts’) produced a manual on the law governing cyber warfare. Estonia was the victim of much publicised cyber attacks in 2007, which have energised the ongoing legal debate on the nature of cyber warfare, especially between States. The cyber attacks started after a dispute arose over the removal of a war memorial in Tallinn which angered ethnic Russians living there. Estonia is one of the most wired countries in the world and, therefore, it was a prime target for the wave of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (hereinafter ‘DDoS’) which took place. Such attacks essentially overload sites with traffic so that users may not access them. Over the course of three weeks, different sites ranging from those of news outlets to banks were jammed. It was claimed that some of the attacks could be traced back to Russia, even from State authorities, although Russia has always denied involvement.