Attacks on infrastructure, attacks on what people believe, weapons that select their own targets, and wars fought on private infrastructure. All four share one problem: nobody can prove who did it.
Four kinds of digital conflict, and the single question every rule of conflict depends on.
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Every rule about conflict — who may be attacked, what counts as an act of war, who must answer for it — assumes you know who acted. Digital conflict is built to be deniable.
What makes it deniable
- The attack travels through other countries' machines, so where it came from is not where it started.
- The same tools are available to states and to criminals, so the method proves nothing about the actor.
- Nothing crosses a border physically, so the acts that traditionally triggered a response never happen.
- Evidence is technical and contested, so an accusation can always be met with a demand for proof that cannot be shared.
See how examiners mark answers
Access past paper questions with model answers. Learn exactly what earns marks and what doesn't.
Real-world examples you can name
The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack — May 2021
A ransomware group reached the company's network through a single reused password on an old VPN account. The company shut the pipeline down for several days as a precaution, causing fuel shortages along the US east coast, and paid a ransom of which US authorities later recovered part.
Who it affected: Drivers and airports across the eastern United States.
Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine — from February 2022
Low-earth-orbit satellite terminals restored connectivity where ground infrastructure had been destroyed. Because coverage decisions rested with a single private company, they also became decisions about the conduct of a war.
Who it affected: Ukrainian civilians and military units relying on the link.
The Zelensky surrender deepfake — March 2022
A synthetic video showing Ukraine's president telling troops to lay down their arms circulated on social media and briefly on a hacked news website. It was crude enough to be debunked within hours, but it is the standard example of synthetic media used in wartime.
Who it affected: Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, and anyone judging what video evidence is worth.
The private infrastructure problem: Starlink satellite internet in Ukraine (Ukraine, from February 2022) put a company in a position where a commercial decision about service coverage was also a military one.
No rule of conflict was written with that arrangement in mind, because it had never existed.
How this is tested — this context reliably produces part-c questions about responsibility, and attribution is the answer to all of them. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — structured question
- Part c: evaluate the use of autonomous weapons
- Part b: explain why a cyber attack is hard to respond to
Paper 2 — source-based question
- Q4: synthesise sources on digital conflict
- HL Paper 3: recommend a rule and say why it is enforceable
The trap: describing the attack: The examinable point is what happens to responsibility. Say why nobody can be held to account and what would change that.
Explain one reason why responding to a cyber attack is difficult.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.
Discuss whether weapons that select their own targets should be banned.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.