NATO Considering 'Petya' Malware a 'Potential Act of War' On Saturday, Kevin Scheid, a Department of Defense veteran, was placed in charge of NATO’s cyber operations. The appointment wouldn’t be big news if it weren’t for the fact that he’s joining the organization at a hair-raising point in history. The vicious malware triggered NATO to announce on Friday that the attack is believed to be the work of a state actor and is a 'Potential Act of War'.
There was a lot of ruckus back in May when Donald Trump met with the leaders of NATO and failed to confirm that the US is committed to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. That’s the clause of the agreement that pledges the members of NATO to mutual defense. Legally speaking, if Article 5 is triggered by an attack on one member, the other members are required to join in retaliation. NATO’s Secretary General confirmed this week that a cyber operation with “consequences comparable to an armed attack can trigger Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and responses might be with military means.” ...
NATO researchers have concluded that the malware “can most likely be attributed to a state actor,” and if a nation is determined to be responsible, “this could be an internationally wrongful act, which might give the targeted states several options to respond with countermeasures.” What sort of countermeasures? Well, pretty much anything.
Independently, the UK’s defense secretary announced this week that his country was prepared to respond to cyber attacks “from any domain - air, land, sea or cyber.”
If our unhinged president in the US wants to start a war for the hell of it, he pretty much has the power to do that. But NATO functions on strict rules.
... According to Bloomberg, attacks on NATO’s electronic infrastructure increased by 60 percent last year. If it’s true that a state actor is responsible for NotPetya, it’s possible that NATO taking notice and talking up Article 5 could make the perpetrator think twice. Then again, if the responsible party gets away without a trace, they’ll know that they’re untouchable.
'NotPetya' Malware Attacks Could Warrant Retaliation, Says Nato ResearcherThe NotPetya malware that wiped computers at organisations including Maersk, Merck and the Ukrainian government in June “could count as a violation of sovereignty”, according to a legal researcher at Nato’s cybersecurity division.
If the malware outbreak was state-sponsored, the Nato researcher says, it could open the possiblity of “countermeasures”. Those could come through retaliatory cyber--attacks, or more conventional means such as sanctions, but they must fall short of a military use of force.
Minárik, added, “as important government systems have been targeted, then in case the operation is attributed to a state this could count as a violation of sovereignty. Consequently, this could be an internationally wrongful act, which might give the targeted states several options to respond with countermeasures.”
A countermeasure is any state response which would be illegal in typical circumstances, but can be authorised as a reaction to an internationally wrongful act by another state. A “hack back” response, for instance, could be a countermeasure, but Nato says that such responses “do not necessarily have to be conducted by cyber means”; they cannot, however, affect third countries, nor can they amount to a use of force. ...
Trump Discovers Article 5 After Disastrous NATO Visit At long last, U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed NATO’s bedrock collective defense clause, Article 5, in a press conference Friday. “Absolutely, I’d be committed to Article 5,” he said Friday in response to a question from a journalist, speaking beside Romanian President Klaus Iohannis at the White House. It gives nervous NATO allies something they’ve yearned for since he came to office in January after disparaging the alliance and openly praising its top geopolitical foe, Russia.
But it may not be enough to patch things over with his NATO allies after his visit last month to Brussels, where Trump gave a public tongue lashing that surprised NATO leaders and his national security team alike — because behind closed doors, things were even worse.
... After a public showing on May 25 in which Trump refused to endorse NATO’s collective defense clause and famously shoved the Montenegrin leader out of the way, leaders of the 29-member alliance retired to a closed-door dinner that multiple sources tell Foreign Policy left alliance leaders “appalled.”
Trump had two versions of prepared remarks for the dinner, one that took a traditional tack and one prepared by the more NATO-skeptic advisors, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. “He dumped both of them and improvised,” one source briefed on the dinner told FP.
During the dinner, Trump went off-script to criticize allies again for not spending enough on defense. (The United States is one of only five members that meets NATO members’ pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.)
Several sources briefed extensively on the dinner say he said 2 percent wasn’t enough and allies should spend 3 percent of GDP on defense, and he even threatened to cut back U.S. defense spending and have Europeans dole out “back pay” to make up for their low defense spending if they didn’t pony up quickly enough. Two sources say Trump didn’t mention Russia once during the dinner.
“Oh, it was like a total shitshow,” said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to discuss the closed-door dinner.
“The dinner was far worse than the speech,” said a former senior U.S. government official briefed on dinner. “It was a train wreck. It was awful.”
After Trump’s performance in Brussels, top European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron publicly criticized Trump in unusually stark tones. Meanwhile, just two weeks after the Brussels visit, Canada announced it would boost defense spending because it can no longer rely on the United States for global leadership.
... Earlier this week, Vice President Mike Pence was deployed to clean up the diplomatic carnage Trump left behind in Brussels. During an Atlantic Council awards dinner Monday night, Pence pledged “unwavering” U.S. commitment to NATO. He also lavished praise on the prime minister of Montenegro, whom Trump shoved aside in Brussels during a photo op. But “allies were taking [Pence’s speech] with a grain of salt,” Alexander Vershbow, former NATO deputy secretary-general, told AFP.