Ongoing Breach of International Criminal Court
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) was hit last week in an ongoing cyberattack that is still being investigated.
A spokesman for ICC released a statement regarding a “cybersecurity incident”, stating: “At the end of last week, The ICC’s services detected anomalous activity affecting its information systems.”
The court stated that their important work would continue amidst the investigation and that it was taking steps to strengthen its cybersecurity framework, as the institution had already been in the process of “accelerating its use of cloud technology” when the breach took place.
It is currently unknown what information was compromised in the attack or who may be responsible.
It is important to note that the ICC, based in Hague in the Netherlands, is no stranger to cyberattacks and international espionage.
According to Cybernews, the ICC was established in 2002 to try war crimes and crimes against humanity, and it holds many different categories of highly sensitive documents, including evidence of names of protected witnesses.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ICC has been called not only to try Russia for its actions, but to consider for the first time in history certain types of cyberattacks as war crimes. Just last month, ICC Prosecutor agreed that cyberattacks could be part of future war crimes investigations.
According to Techxplore, the Netherlands said it had stopped a Russian spy posting as a Brazilian intern from infiltrating the court last year, who could have accessed “highly valuable” intelligence on the ICC’s probe into war crimes in Ukraine or even influenced criminal proceedings, according to Dutch authorities.
The ICC is currently investigating possible Russian war crimes in Georgia and even issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of illegally deporting children from Ukraine.
Russian officials have denounced these claims, as well as any authority ICC has.
