The Russian military has been accused of war crimes in the midst of its invasion of Ukraine, with mass graves, bombed hospitals, and makeshift torture chambers among the evidence. One group is making the counterintuitive case that another arm of the Russian military should be included in any international war crimes charges: the Kremlin's most disruptive and dangerous hackers.
A group of human rights lawyers and investigators sent a formal request to the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in the Hague in late March. Even as prosecutors gather evidence of more traditional, ongoing war crimes there, it urges the International Criminal Court to consider war crime prosecutions of Russian hackers for their cyberattacks in Ukraine. The Human Rights Center's international criminal investigations team points to two of Sandworm's most egregious acts of cyberwarfare in its detailed brief to the group.
An investigation into Russia's hostile cyber operations would show how to protect yourself.
The Berkeley Human Rights Center wrote a letter to the International Criminal Court.
The Berkeley group sent their document under a provision of the Rome Statute treaty, which gives the International Criminal Court its authority. It wants the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to investigate the cyber domain in addition to traditional warfare. It argues that precedent would help to seek justice for those harmed by Sandworm's cyberattacks, as well as to deter future cyberattacks affecting critical civilian infrastructure around the world.
In the absence of consequences or any mechanisms for meaningful accountability, State-sponsored cyberattacks have increased in the shadows, according to the Human Rights Center.
The Human Rights Center says that the prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court has received and is considering the group's recommendations. The prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment.
The prosecutor's office of the International Criminal Court has been investigating war crimes in Russia's Ukraine invasion, along with the governments of Ukraine, Poland, andLithuania. She emphasizes that the charges for the ongoing massacres, reckless killing of civilians, and mass deportations in Ukraine should be added to the cyber war crime charges. She says that the only way to properly investigate and understand this conflict is through seeing not just what is happening in the physical world, but also what is happening in the cyber and information spaces.
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