Global South Cyber Attribution Taskforce
The Global South Cyber Attribution Taskforce examines the motivations, opportunities and challenges for developing countries to call out malicious cyber activity.
Introduction
RUSI's Cyber and Tech team, through its Global Partnership for Responsible Cyber Behaviour (GP-RCB), has formed the Global South Cyber Attribution Taskforce to map key characteristics and trends in public cyber attribution by countries in the Global South.
For over a decade, public cyber attribution — the practice of a government openly naming another state as responsible for a cyber operation — has been led by Western countries. As an increasingly diverse set of countries and regions such as China, Azerbaijan, Taiwan, Venezuela, Singapore, and Samoa become more inclined to use naming and shaming of malicious cyber activity, important questions emerge:
- How are Global South countries conducting and/or thinking about public cyber attribution?
- Are Western governments ready for more Global South-led cyber attributions?
- What are the policy challenges and opportunities that emerge from that?
This Taskforce brings together experts from academia, private sector and government in a series of research workshops to explore these and other questions while developing a database of relevant cases.
Project sponsor
The German Federal Foreign Office (Auswartiges Amt)Â
Aims and objectives
The primary objectives of the Global South Cyber Attribution Taskforce are to:
- Identify and select a range of case studies that are illustrative of non-Western public cyber attribution, including South-North and South-South examples.
- Identify key characteristics and trends of some of the cases' selected attributions.
- Provide recommendations for Global South-sensitive approaches to cyber attribution.
The Taskforce will convene a series of workshops and research meetings, the findings from which culminate in the publication of a RUSI report.
