Il caso WannaCry: il fenomeno dei cyber attacks nel contesto della responsabilità internazionale degli Stati

The cyber attack WannaCry, which occurred in May 2017, caused serious damages to international private companies and to more than 150 States located all over the world. After a preliminary description of the facts related to the attack, this article aims to frame it under the law of the international responsibility of States. More precisely, the objective and the subjective elements of the international wrongful act must be identified in the case at stake. Conclusively, by observing the extreme difficulty in attributing WannaCry’s conducts to a State, the article points out the potential relevance of the application of the general principle of due diligence in cyberspace, in order to find a juridical deterrent to the production and proliferation of malwares on the internet.