The Ethics of Cyber Conflict

At least on the surface, most cyber attacks appear to be clearly unethical as well as illegal. These include attacks performed for amusement or bragging rights, such as web defacements conducted “just for fun” and computer viruses launched out of curiosity but disregard for their consequences. They also include attacks done for personal gain, such as system intrusions to steal credit card numbers and trade secrets; denial-of-service attacks aimed at taking out competitor websites or extorting money from victims; and attacks that compromise and deploy large “botnets” of victim computers to send out spam or amplify denial-of-service attacks.