This cross-disciplinary project is a collaboration between Yale Law School and Yale University’s Department of Computer Science focused on legal and technical aspects of cyber conflict. Traditionally, cyber security research and policy have proceeded on the (sometimes tacit) assumption that attackers are motivated by “profit, protest, challenge, enjoyment, or [the desire to] evaluate security weaknesses to assist in removing them.” Such motivations naturally impose limits on the resources that attackers can or will bring to bear. Preventive security technology such as firewalls, authentication protocols, access controls, and encryption can fend off many such attacks. System redundancy and information back-up can help targeted organizations continue to operate while under attack, or at least resume operation after an attack. Increasingly, however, international conflict and other political motivations are playing a role in cyber attacks. How do attacks motivated by conflicts between nations or between rival factions within nations differ from the better-studied attacks motivated by profit, protest, challenge, enjoyment, or security testing? Do they pose new technical challenges for defenders of computer networks and other cyber and physical resources?
Will attackers of this sort be far better resourced, able to attack continuously for long periods of time, eliminating the targets’ option of simply waiting out the attack and then reconstituting their operations? These questions are the starting point for exploration of what the investigators call “cyber conflict.”