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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 heart, it consists of 13 hypothetical scenarios, to which more will be added in the future. 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; 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

Featured incident

In early May 2019, hostilities flared up again in the context of the armed conflict between Israel and Palestine. According to news reports, hundreds of rockets were fired on Israel, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) answered with artillery and airstrikes. Remarkably, the Israeli response included also a kinetic attack allegedly aimed at countering a hostile cyber operation conducted by Hamas. In particular, the IDF announced on Twitter that it had “thwarted an attempted Hamas cyber offensive” and subsequently conducted an air strike against the Hamas Cyber Headquarters. The announcement has sparked a debate whether this operation sets a legal precedent from the perspective of international law. Within the Toolkit, Scenario 03 considers when a cyber operation may qualify as a use of force under international law and Scenario 12 analyses aspects of the law of targeting with respect to cyber operations.

Behind the scenes

The project is supported through the UK ESRC IAA Project Co-Creation scheme. Partner institutions include the University of Exeter, United Kingdom; NATO Co-operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCD COE) in Tallinn, Estonia; and the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NCISA) in Brno, Czechia. The core of the project team consists of Dr Kubo Mačák (Exeter) – General Editor; Mr Tomáš Minárik (CCD COE) – Managing Editor; and Ms Taťána Jančárková (NCISA) – Scenario Editor. The individual scenarios and the Toolkit as such have been reviewed by a team of over 20 peer reviewers. The Toolkit was formally launched on 28 May 2019 in Tallinn, Estonia, and it remains continuously updated. For questions about the project including media enquiries, please contact us at cyberlaw@exeter.ac.uk.

Other resources

• 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.
• Examples – List of real-world incidents that have inspired the analysis in the Toolkit.
• 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...).

Call for submissions

Cyber Law Toolkit is now inviting submissions for its next general update in 2020. Successful authors will be awarded an honorarium. This call for submissions is open until 1 November 2019. Full text of the call with submission dates and contacts is available for download here: PDF