Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues

Hacktivism is a social phenomena which evokes different social assessments. The definitions of a term differ in many respects. This theoretical model of hacktivism has not yet been implemented into an empirical strategy for sociological research. The paper describes the the main initiatives taken by Anonymous collective during the 2014 conflict in Ukraine, which is considered by many researchers to be the first stage of preparation for the war triggered by Russia in 2022. Author analyses the collective’s activity in 2022, after the war started, in order to identify similarities and differences in the creation of information messages about the situation. The comparative analysis covers information published in Anonymous’ tweets and selected online news services. She asks the question about the possible consequences of Anonymous actions in the open cyber field for the social moods around the world. To what extent these media messages and their construction have reflected the social perception and/or social attitudes towards Russia’s aggression? The theoretic explorations were embedded mainly on two methods: criticism of writing and the analytical and comparative one.

The essence of administrative and legal regulation of the activities of the subjects of the national cybersecurity system of Ukraine has been established, which consists in building an effective system for ensuring cybersecurity and requires from the state bodies of Ukraine a clear legal definition of the principles of state policy in this area and an advanced response to dynamic changes taking place in the world in the field of cybersecurity. The classifier of threats to the security of information resources has been improved, which, in contrast to the existing ones, is based on a synergetic model of threats, which allows to classify threats by security components, types of services, and hierarchy levels of the infrastructure of automated systems, to assess the synergy and hybridity of threats to information security, cybersecurity, information security, and the likelihood of their impact on the security of information resources. It has been proved that the choice of specific means and ways of ensuring the cybersecurity of Ukraine is conditioned by the need to take timely measures adequate to the nature and scale of real and potential cybernetic threats to the vital interests of a person and citizen, society and the state. The purpose of the cybersecurity system of Ukraine has been clarified. The task of the cybersecurity system is to create the necessary conditions in cyberspace, under which it is possible to achieve national goals and realize the interests, tasks, and goals of its elements.

The methodological foundations of the formation of analytical support for public administration of cybersecurity have been improved. Based on a combination of hierarchical and non-hierarchical clustering methods using the IBM SPSS Statistics package, the country’s regions have been grouped into four clusters, which is the basis for adjusting the priorities of the state cybersecurity policy, a well-grounded approach when choosing means and instruments of influence at the regional level. In modern doctrine and practice of international law, the issues of qualification of cyber warfare remain controversial. There are approaches to justify the application of international humanitarian and criminal law. The most justified, in our opinion, is the qualification of cyber warfare as a violation of the UNO Charter and the use of force, and in some cases – the crime of aggression. The substantive rules of the institution of international cooperation in the fight against cybercrime determine the special principles of this kind of cooperation, the criminalization of certain types of illegal acts, as well as institutional mechanisms and capacity building. The system of international combating cybercrime is based on the principles of technical neutrality, multi-stakeholderism (public-private partnerships), as well as the equivalence of human rights online and offline. In the future, cybercrime will be associated with the use of innovative technologies. As it has been established by the example of the Internet of things, the latest technology, as a general rule, is included in the scope of existing international agreements on cybercrime, but there is no special regulation for them. We propose formal consolidation of the provision on “emergent technologies” in the texts of international legal acts in the field of combating cybercrime. First of all, this concerns the future UNO Convention on the fight against cybercrime, which should also provide for an additional body, such as the T-CY Committee under the Council of Europe Convention, which will provide clarification on the application of the agreement in specific changed circumstances.

This article discusses the Ukrainian legislation on cybersecurity. The necessity of developing an efficient cybersecurity system was raised by the hybrid war conducted by Russia over the last few years, in which many critical infrastructure objects have been destroyed with serious consequences not only for the end consumers but also for the security of the state. Consequently, Ukraine has begun issuing a number of laws aiming at strengthening its cyber defense capabilities by establishing an efficient national cybersecurity system. The analysis has clearly shown that although important steps have already been taken in this direction, much still remains to be done to protect the Ukrainian critical infrastructure.

Lately a lot of attention has been given to legal regulation of cybersecurity. This article will review legal regulation of cybersecurity in Lithuania. Historical retrospective of legal regulation of cybersecurity in Lithuania will be discussed, strategic Lithuanian cybersecurity documents will be analysed, and the Law on Cybersecurity of the Republic of Lithuania will be analysed and evaluated. After a comparative analysis of cybersecurity strategies and laws and a review of legal regulation of cybersecurity in Lithuania, gaps of law-making and of other measures were distinguished, and corresponding conclusions were made. The adoption of the new Law on Cybersecurity, which regulates many important institutes, is evaluated positively. But with regard to the current legal regulation on cybersecurity in Lithuania additional measures are necessary (functions of institutions that formulate cybersecurity policy and perform control functions have not been detailed and distinguished, also functions of the Lithuanian national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) are not foreseen in the Law on Cybersecurity, etc.).