ICRC: a digital emblem against cyberattacks

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) aspires to develop an emblem for digital space, based on the red cross used in physical space to identify and protect vehicles and buildings in conflict zones. Attacking them is indeed a war crime.

The ICRC is working to replicate this type of emblem, but online, in collaboration with the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (USA) and the Centre for Cyber Trust at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. This project presents numerous challenges: first, to define the legal recognition of this digital emblem; then to have the idea accepted; and finally to have it
recognised.

Several avenues are being explored: developing a file containing this emblem to install it in the computer system to be protected; associating a domain name with systems protected by the digital emblem; or working at the level of network addresses. This emblem could thus be a line of code or a protocol in the communication between machines.

However, the ICRC does not rule out a role as mediator in a digital conflict, as it sometimes does in physical conflicts.