OCTAs, Cyberterrorism and International Law: Exploring the Legal Landscape of Operational Cyber Terrorist Activities

The last decade has witnessed the rise of cyber terrorist groups and their exploitation of cyberspace and cyber technologies to advance their interests and pursue their agendas. In particular, these groups exploit cyberspace for the purposes of recruitment, financing and propaganda, that is, operational cyber terrorist activities (OCTAs). With this in mind, this thesis examines whether and to what extent international law applies to OCTAs. It first examines conventional law in the form of regional treaties and UN resolutions to determine whether they afford states effective protection against OCTAs. Concluding that conventional international law offers little protection against OCTAs, this thesis examines the degree of protection afforded by the customary international law obligation upon states to prevent their territory from being used to cause harm to the legal rights of other states. While this thesis shows that the obligation to prevent transboundary harm requires states to prevent certain types of OCTAs, not all OCTAs will fall within the scope of this obligation. Therefore, this thesis concludes that while customary law can, to some extent, protect states against certain OCTAs, states need to progressively develop international law in order to put in place legal measures that can combat the threat posed by OCTAs specifically and cyber terrorism generally.