Challenges of the Application of International Humanitarian Law in Cyber Warfare

Looking at war from any angle, we will find it a terrible and violent phenomenon. At the same time, throughout the history, wars and armed conflicts have happened thousands of times and will happen in the future, and humanity cannot escape from it. But, they can be ruled by law and morality, so that wars, which in fact represent conflict of interests, do not turn into savagery and crime. As we witness in the third millennium, the nature and form of warfare is nowadays changing, and this falls under the rules of the international armed conflicts as such that is stipulated under The Tallinn Manual 1 & 2 by the NATO. The research method in this research is descriptive-analytical and the results of the research confirm that it is possible to apply humanitarian standards of international humanitarian law in cyber warfare because war is a phenomenon that affects all sections of a country and causes serious harms. It also affects the right to life and other aspects of human rights, because the first stage of cyber warfare is military and security classified information, and the next stage is the destruction, transfer, change and distortion of information and data related to the people and civilians of the enemy, and, noting that the civilians are not considered as combatants, they must not be the target of cyber-attacks and that the international humanitarian law, which is a common human value, must be applied in such cases.