Cyber Conflict After Stuxnet: Essays from the Other Bank of the Rubicon

With the discovery of Stuxnet in 2010, the cyber conflict community crossed a strategic Rubicon. For years, Cassandras had warned of a future in which networked cyberspace would move beyond hacking and espionage to become a battlefield with effects in in the real world. Stuxnet proved this was possible. After careful testing, the Stuxnet malware found its way into closed industrial control system networks controlling Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and subtly caused them to destroy themselves in a way that looked like random, unexplainable malfunctions. This edited volume represents the first effort to comprehensively analyze Stuxnet and its implications. It brings together an interdisciplinary group of experts to examine the incident’s strategic, legal, economic, military, and diplomatic consequences. The essays explore Stuxnet in the context of both international and US domestic law; reveal the varied reactions in Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran; and offer confidence-building measures and frameworks for dealing with a post-Stuxnet world.