Emilia Neuber (Hertie School of Governance) & Mischa Hansel (IFSH) 05 January 2023 Peer review mechanisms are widely used to facilitate the implementation of regulations and guidelines in various policy areas, including for example cybersecurity certification or ICT risk assessment. However, such mechanisms might also offer a new approach to the challenges of implementing the UN norms of responsible state…

Mischa Hansel 13 December 2022 Crime, Proxies and Liberal Democracies Politically motivated individuals and hacker collectives have not been the only ones participating in the cyber confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. Conti, one of the most notorious ransomware gangs, declared their solidarity with the Russian government and threatened retaliation against any Western action within days of the…

Mischa Hansel 05 December 2022 The Ukraine War has reiterated the urgency for addressing substantial peace and security risk of cyber operations. While there have not been any successful large-scale destructive cyberattacks thus far, the way in which cyber capabilities have been used by both state and non-state actors nevertheless has worrying implications. Existing dilemmas…

Mischa Hansel  17 November 2022 The growth of the global surveillance industry and the proliferation of access-as-a-service in particular has become a serious national security and human rights concern in recent years. For example, Pegasus software was allegedly used to target Hanan Elatr’s mobile phone, just months before her husband Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi…

Mischa Hansel 21 June 2022 Other conflicts may not play-out as the Ukraine war has thus far in cyberspace. Attackers might be better prepared and more ready to use offensive cyber capacities, defenders on the other hand might well have less experience and fewer international allies. In this third part, I want to focus on…

Mischa Hansel 14 June 2022 Describing and understanding the puzzle are of course two different things, let alone deriving policy conclusions. In the second part of this post, I will argue that special, although not necessarily unique, strategic circumstances have contributed to the absence of more serious cyberattacks, particularly against critical infrastructures in the context…

Mischa Hansel 25 May 2022 In the three months since the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine, numerous articles on the military and strategic significance of cyber operations have been published. Most – but not all – assume we are faced with major puzzle: how come there have not been any large-scale disruptive cyberattacks against critical infrastructures in Ukraine and…