Transnational Crime 429United States, engage in some form of cyber espionage, China has so far been the most
expansive, sophisticated, and successful. While experts disagree about the magnitude
of the theft, they do not dispute where these attacks originate: China (95 percent), Rus
sia (3 percent), and Iran (2 percent). In 2011, a U.S. nonprofit monitoring group, U.S.
Cyber Consequences Unit, characterized the theft from China alone as representing
“the biggest transfer of wealth in a short period of time that the world has ever seen.”^20
Because it takes time to evaluate and duplicate stolen designs, the damage of such a
theft today may not be truly felt for five or ten years.
A good example of netcrime that straddled the lines between vandalism, espionage,
and deliberate harm was the Sony Pictures Entertainment attack in 2014. Sony Pictures
Entertainment was attacked by a group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace.” The
group demanded that Sony halt the release of a film titled The Interview, which was
meant to be a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
The North Korean government did not find the film funny, and the “hack” resulted in
an estimated 100 terabytes of stolen data from Sony. Beyond the disclosures released
by the Guardians— many unflattering— Sony has had to set aside $15 million to secure
itself against future cyber attacks. To make matters worse, subsequent investigation
could not confirm the identity of the hackers, and most experts do not believe that
North Korea— itself a major cyber power— was actually behind the attack. The lack
of capacity to identify attackers is one feature of cyber crime that sets it apart from
many other types of or ga nized criminal activity.
Fi nally, the same capacity to steal can be turned into the capacity to disrupt commu
nications, water, electricity, and emergency ser vices operations in major metropolitan
areas of a target state. Military networks can potentially be compromised as well.
Because each of these actions has a high potential to result in loss of life in a target
community, these capabilities generally fall under the heading of cyber terror or cyber
warfare. (See Chapter 8.)
In 2013, the UN group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of
Information and Telecommunications wrote a report supporting norms to govern state
be hav ior in cyberspace. States should be held responsible for cyberattacks coming from
within their territory and provide assistance to stop such attacks. Yet finding the cul
prits behind cyber attacks in any form is itself difficult. And for the United States, a
state that ranks high as an origin country of malicious cyber activity, the stakes are
high. Great Britain’s approach to cyber security is instructive (see the Global Perspectives
box, p. 430–31).
a theoretical take
Because the motive of most crime is by definition profit, international relations theory
tends to treat issues such as cyber crime and human and narcotrafficking as peripheral