Main Page

Welcome to the Cyber Law Toolkit, an interactive online resource on international law and cyber operations.

About the project

The Cyber Law Toolkit is a dynamic interactive web-based resource for legal professionals who work with matters at the intersection of international law and cyber operations. The Toolkit may be explored and utilized in a number of different ways. At its core, it presently consists of 28 hypothetical scenarios. Each scenario contains a description of cyber incidents inspired by real-world examples, accompanied by detailed legal analysis. The aim of the analysis is to examine the applicability of international law to the scenarios and the issues they raise. You can see all scenarios in the box immediately below – just click on any of them to follow the relevant analysis. In addition, you may want to explore the Toolkit by looking for keywords you’re interested in; by viewing its overall article structure; by browsing through the national positions on international law in cyberspace; or by reading about individual real-world examples that serve as the basis of the Toolkit scenarios. Finally, you may want to use the search function in the top right corner of this page to look for specific words across all of the Toolkit content.

Cyber law scenarios

S01 Election interference	S02 Political espionage	S03 Power grid	S04 International organization
S05 Criminal investigation	S06 Enabling State	S07 Hacking tools	S08 Certificate authority
S09 Economic espionage	S10 Cyber weapons	S11 Surveillance tools	S12 Computer data
S13 Armed conflict	S14 Ransomware campaign	S15 Cyber deception	S16 High seas
S17 Collective responses	S18 Cyber operators	S19 Hate speech	S20 Medical facilities
S21 Misattribution	S22 Methods of warfare	S23 Vaccine research	S24 Internet blockage
S25 Humanitarian assistance	S26 Export licensing	S27 Redirecting attacks	S28 Incidental harm

Featured incident

In September 2020, the German University Hospital in Düsseldorf was forced to reduce healthcare service due to a ransomware attack that crippled its systems. The attackers managed to compromise 30 clinic’s servers, reducing its capacity by fifty per cent for several days. This ransomware campaign with links to Russian groups is known worldwide because a woman has died when taken into a distant hospital that could accept her, even though her death was later not concluded as a result of the attack. The attack was most likely a mistake since the perpetrators left a note in a code addressed to Heinrich Heine University. Once the hackers were informed about their misstep, they stopped and provided the hospital with the encryption key without any ransom demands before cutting the communication. Even though no data has been lost, this ransomware campaign once again showed how the healthcare sector is vulnerable to cyber attacks.

In the Toolkit, Scenario 20 focuses directly on cyber operations against medical facilities. Given that the hospital suffered a ransomware attack, Scenario 14 exploring the ransomware campaign is also relevant.

Quick links

• FAQ – Frequently asked questions about the project and the Toolkit.
• All articles – Updated list of all substantive articles in the Toolkit. In a printed book, this would be the table of contents.
• Keywords – Overview of all keywords used across the Toolkit content. Serves the same purpose as an index would in a printed book.
• Legal concepts – Overview of all legal concepts from different branches of international law used across the Toolkit content.
• Examples – List of real-world incidents that have inspired the analysis in the Toolkit.
• National positions – List of publicly available national positions on the application of international law to cyber operations.
• Glossary – Glossary of the technical terms used in the Toolkit.
• Short form citation – Abbreviated references for the most commonly used citations in the Toolkit.
• Bibliography – Bibliography of resources used in the creation and development of the Toolkit.
• People – List of all people involved in the project (including scenario authors, peer reviewers, research assistants...).

Behind the scenes

The project is supported by the following six partner institutions: the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NÚKIB), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE), the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, the U.S. Naval War College, United States, and Wuhan University, China. The core of the project team consists of Dr Kubo Mačák (University of Exeter) – General Editor; Mr Tomáš Minárik (NÚKIB) – Managing Editor; and Mr Otakar Horák (CCDCOE) – Scenario Editor. The individual scenarios and the Toolkit as such have been reviewed by a team of over 30 peer reviewers. The Toolkit was formally launched on 28 May 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia; its Chinese launch took place on 2 November 2019 in Wuhan, China; it received its most recent general annual update on 20 October 2022; and it remains continuously updated. For questions about the project including media enquiries, please contact us at cyberlaw@exeter.ac.uk.

Call for submissions

Cyber Law Toolkit is now inviting submissions for its next general update in 2024. Successful authors will be awarded an honorarium. This call for submissions is open until 1 December 2023. Full text of the call with submission dates and contacts is available for download here: Call for submissions (PDF)