The Applicability of International Humanitarian law in Cyber warfare

In the information age, because the battlefields are shifted, the international community is threatened by cyber war fares. Today, cyber-attacks are considered as a separate category in different methods of warfare and at the same time, they can represent a novel type of use of force since they may lead to impacts such as massive damages to the critical infrastructure of a government, property damages, and loss of human lives. Therefore, when using this novel method of confliction, whether a war operation in a conflict solely consists of cyber-attacks or cyber warfare is a part of a military conflict with several tactics, principles of international humanitarian law must be applied and the governments must abide by the obligation according to which, the new means and methods they use in cyber warfare are in accordance with the existing principles of international humanitarian law.
This article aims to prove that until specific principles of international humanitarian law in cyber war fares are not developed, by means of resorting to the existing principles and rules, cyber conflicts can still be defined within the framework of the principles of international humanitarian law.