Red Cross eyes digital emblem for cyberspace protection

tech.hindustantimes.com:

When Red Cross staff work in conflict zones, their recognisable red-on-white emblems signal that they and those they are helping should not be targeted.

Now, as warfare and attacks increasingly move into cyberspace, the organisation wants to create a digital emblem that would alert would-be attackers that they have entered computer systems of the Red Cross or medical facilities.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called Thursday on countries to support the idea, arguing that such a digital emblem would help protect humanitarian infrastructure against erroneous targeting.

"As societies digitalise, cyber operations are becoming a reality of armed conflict," ICRC's director-general Robert Mardini said in a statement.

"The 'digital emblem' is a concrete step to protect essential medical infrastructure and the ICRC in the digital realm."

For more than 150 years, the organisation's distinctive emblems -- the red cross and red crescent, and more recently the red crystal -- have conveyed in times of conflict that the people, facilities and objects they mark are protected under international law and that attacking them constitutes a war crime.

- Potential for abuse? -

But to date, there are no such signals in the cyber world.

The ICRC has been mulling this idea for a while, launching a project in 2020 to examine the technical feasibility of creating a digital emblem, and opening consultations to weigh the benefits of such a system against potential for abuse.

Concerns have been raised that such an emblem could risk identifying a set of "soft targets" to malicious actors, making it easier to systematically target them.

Malicious actors could also misuse a digital emblem to falsely identify their