When Red Cross personnel work in conflict areas, their recognizable red-on-white logo signals that they and the people they are helping should not be targeted.
Now, as wars and attacks increasingly enter the cyberspace, the organization wanted to create a digital logo that would warn attackers would be the same attackers they have infiltrated. import computer system of the Red Cross or medical facilities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Thursday called on countries to support the idea, arguing that such a digital symbol would help protect humanitarian infrastructure against targeting. mistake.
“As society digitizes, cyber operations are becoming the reality of armed conflict,” ICRC Director General Robert Mardini said in a statement.
The “Digital Icon” is a concrete step to protect essential health infrastructure and ICRC in the digital sphere. ”
For more than 150 years, the organization’s distinctive symbols – the red cross and red crescent, and more recently the red crystal – have conveyed in times of conflict that the people, facilities, and objects they strike Marks are protected under international law and attacks on them constitute a war crime.
– Possibility of abuse? –
But so far, there is no such signal in the cyber world.
The ICRC has been mulling over the idea for some time, launching a project in 2020 to test the technical feasibility of creating a digital logo and opening consultations to weigh its benefits. such a system with the potential for abuse.
There was concern that such a symbol could potentially identify a set of “soft targets” for malicious actors, making systematic targeting easier.
Malicious actors can also abuse the digital symbol to misidentify their activity as having protected status under international law.
But on Thursday, the ICRC presented a report titled “Digitalizing Red Cross, Red Crescent and Red Crystal Symbols”, concluding that the advantages outweigh the risks.
In the preface, Mardini emphasized that cyberattacks on health facilities and humanitarian infrastructure can have serious and deadly consequences in real life.
He pointed out that a growing number of cyberattacks on hospitals since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, “have disrupted life-saving treatment and forced doctors and nurses to resort to pen and paper at a time when they are most urgently needed.”
– ‘Big Shock’ –
And the ICRC itself became the victim of a major cyber attack last January, in which hacker seized data on more than half a million extremely vulnerable people, including some people fleeing conflict, detainees and unaccompanied migrants.
That attack “was a real shock to our organization,” Balthasar Staehelin, ICRC’s director of data and digital transformation, told a recent conference in Geneva.
While noting that his organization has long been focused on data protection, Mardini said “the data breach highlights the urgency of our work in this area.”
He added: “Protecting personal data, and ensuring the availability and integrity of our data and systems in the digital space, are essential to supporting and protecting everyone in the world. real world”.
In the January case, the ICRC told AFP it had determined it was targeted “because the attackers created a piece of code that was designed purely to execute on ICRC servers that were designed to run on the Internet.” targeted.”
So a digital logo probably won’t do much to prevent such an attack, but in many cases it will provide “an extra layer of protection”, ICRC legal counsel , Tilman Rodenhauser said during an event launching the report on Thursday.
It would “signal to professional network operators that they need to stay away, according to the law and ethical standards,” he said.
ICRC says it has been working with a number of universities and others to develop possible technical solutions for the digital logo.
It indicates several possible approaches, including embedding the symbol in the domain name (e.g. www.hospital.emblem) or embedding it in the IP address, with a specific string of numbers signaling a technical asset protected digital.
The organization stresses though that to make the digital symbol a reality, countries need to agree on its use and include it in International Humanitarian Law, along with the three physical symbols currently in use. use.
