Will Cyber War Come to a Contract Near You?

Feb.01.2012

Cyber war has arrived: Sec. Panetta warns of a "digital Pearl Harbor," the Stuxnet cyber missile penetrates Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility, and cyber attacks shut down power grids in other countries, as discussed in David Bodenheimer's article "Cyberwarefare in the Stuxnet Age: Can Cannonball Law Keep Pace with the Digital Battlefield?" in the ABA's SciTech Lawyer. Focusing on what cyber warfare means for the private sector, this article explains how government contractors supporting offensive or defensive cyber operations (or even just standing by) face unprecedented and potentially ruinous legal liability for cyber weapons gone awry, multi-billion-dollar class actions for assisting federal agencies in authentication efforts to track down covert cyber adversaries, and huge economic losses when private information networks must be disconnected, shut down, or disabled due to foreign cyber infections or botnets, leaving the private sector to ask who foots the bill.

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