Abstract

Information technology is now constantly being used in armed conflicts. It has profoundly innovated the “classicµ tools of warfare. It is enough to think of the improvement of missile targeting systems, the possibility of encrypting strategic communications with systems that were unimaginable a few years ago, or the ability to attack a target thousands of kilometres away thanks to a satellite-controlled drone. But beyond this, information technologies are today both an instrument and a target of war. It is in the latter sense that contemporary warfare has in some cases become a war so different from previous forms that it deserves to be called cyberwarfare. It is a nonvirtual war, which presents dangers and problems that are difficult to solve, even from a legal point of view, since it is part of a scenario in which the distinctions of the old international law, such as those between civilian and military, neutral and belligerent, prisoner and combatant, have disappeared.