Modern Warfare
The International Red Cross has released guidelines that it says should be followed by hackers, but in Ukraine and Israel they're falling on deaf ears
The International Red Cross has released eight rules, or guidelines, that it says should be followed by “civilian hackers.” While the distinction between civilian and state actor is implied, the actual distinction is increasingly difficult to make.
Do not direct cyber-attacks against civilian objects
Do not use malware or other tools or techniques that spread automatically and damage military objectives and civilian objects indiscriminately
When planning a cyber-attack against a military objective, do everything feasible to avoid or minimise the effects your operation may have on civilians
Do not conduct any cyber-operation against medical and humanitarian facilities
Do not conduct any cyber-attack against objects indispensable to the survival of the population or that can release dangerous forces
Do not make threats of violence to spread terror among the civilian population
Do not incite violations of international humanitarian law
Comply with these rules even if the enemy does not
While these guidelines were released in apparent response to events in Ukraine, a more recent report by Cloudflare showed that an Android app pretending to be a real-time alert system for rocket attacks was in fact disrupting telecommunications and giving false reports to its users. Another recent report showed that an Advanced Persistent Threat, for which read “state-sponsored hacker organization,” was using the infrastructure of the popular Discord communication platform to stage attacks against Ukrainian targets.