Strategic Publicity?: Understanding US Government Cyber Attribution

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: When and under what circumstances does the U.S. government publicly attribute state-backed cyber intrusions? Over the past decade, the U.S. has become increasingly willing to publicly assign responsibility for cyber incidents to state adversaries. Emerging works examine theoretical motivations for states to publicly attribute, without providing a systematic, empirical study of the practice. This thesis seeks to fill this gap by compiling a data set of public attributions by the U.S. government to another state from 2010-2020, in addition to data on timing. My analysis suggests that public attribution by the U.S. government does not occur through a unified policy process, but four distinct “channels” – technical, criminal, official and unofficial policy. Bilateral relations between the U.S. and adversary state, U.S. domestic politics, and attribution by private sector entities have no systematic effect on the timing of public attribution. Moreover, two case studies of public attribution, of Iran’s Operation Ababil and Russia’s Dragonfly 2.0 campaign, demonstrate that organizational factors specific to attributing agencies influence the timing of the practice. These findings have implications for the U.S. government’s signaling and development of international norms in cyberspace.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 20, 2021

Author	Lee, Heajune
Advisor	Grotto, Andrew
Advisor	Zegart, Amy
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation

Subject	Center for International Security and Cooperation
Subject	cybersecurity
Subject	attribution
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/py070wt8487

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred Citation: Lee, Heajune. (2021). Strategic Publicity?: Understanding US Government Cyber Attribution. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/py070wt8487

Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses

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