The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is proposing several measures to dissuade hackers from breaking into medical institutions’ networks and computers. The idea is not to offer better protection from cyber-attacks, but to ensure that health and humanitarian institutions are more clearly identified. A digital emblem would “make it easier for those conducting cyber operations during armed conflict to identify and spare protected facilities – just as a red cross or crescent on a hospital roof does in the real world”, the ICRC says.
Three technical solutions are considered: DNS-based emblem (where the emblem is linked to or visible at the domain name level), an IP-based emblem (that would require embedding semantics into IP addresses), or an Authenticated Digital Emblem system (using certificate chains to signal protection). Several universities in Switzerland, Germany, the U.S., and Russia are working with the ICRC to implement these solutions.
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