Review Cyberthreats and International Law

We all experience daily the benefits the internet brings us, but in cyberspace, as in life, along with the good comes the bad. Some users are insulted on social media, others are swindled in online marketplaces, and spam, viruses and worms exist in large numbers. The latter are commonly headed under the term ‘threats’, and where the internet is used as the medium, they are labelled ‘cyberthreats’. Both the internet’s infrastructure and applications have vulnerabilities as it was not developed to be secure. Ironically, what began as a military network did not contain any security measures—they were not needed back then, because the internet was meant to serve as a closed system. This historical background must be kept in mind when discussing cyberthreats, which are inherent features of the internet. This book could serve as an introduction to the topic of cyberthreats and international law. The list of references in this book is impressive and includes, inter alia, scholarly work, policy documents, and popular media. The layout does not particularly help the reader to browse quickly through the references, but it at least forces the reader to go through it carefully. The last chapter, Outlook (p 309-311), includes some interesting observations. In particular, the author states that there is still a lot of work to be done in this field, a notion with which I could not agree mor