practice

Doi: 10.1145/1897852.1897869

Article development led by queue.acm.org

Attacks in Estonia and Georgia highlight
key vulnerabilities in national Internet
infrastructure.
By Ross staPLeton-GRay anD WiLLiaM WooDcocK
national
internet
Defense—
small states
on the
skirmish Line

DeSPite the glOBal and borderless nature of the
Internet’s underlying protocols and driving
philosophy, there are significant ways in which it
remains substantively territorial. nations have
policies and laws that govern and attempt to
defend “their Internet”—the portions of the global
network that they deem to most directly impact
their commerce, their citizens’ communication, and
their national means to project social, political,

and commercial activity and influence. This is far less palpable than a nation’s physical territory or even than “its air” or “its water”—one could, for example, establish by treaty how much pollution Mexican and American factories might contribute to the atmosphere along their shared border, and establish metrics and targets fairly objectively. Cyberspace is still a much wilder frontier, difficult to define and measure. Where its effects are noted and measurable, all too often they are hard to attribute to responsible parties.

Nonetheless, nation-states are taking steps to defend that space, and some have allegedly taken steps to at-