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E. Weippl:
"Cyber Attacks and the article 5 of the Treaty of NATO";
Euro Atlantic Quartely, 3 (2008), 4; 22.

NATO is the strongest military alliance in the world and while its member states have often been involved in armed conflicts, no large-scale armed attacks on any member happened until Sep 11, 2001. Solidarity is one of the guiding principles of any alliance and 9/11 lead to the first invocation of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty from 1949.

In this brief article I want to explore the idea whether cyber attacks launched on a country might constitute an armed attack as to invoke Article 5. The thoughts presented here are not based on a legal analysis but rather on the technical and practical consequences of such an invocation.