The Potential of Zero-Knowledge-Proof to the Attribution Dilemma

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Cyber incidents are on the rise and represent a threat to states' sovereignty. The attribution of those cyber incidents is essential to state's response to cyberthreats. As a result, scholars have focused on the process of attribution and evidentiary standards for proving the provenance of cyberattacks. Nevertheless, with only a legal system establishing evidentiary standards for attributing cyberattacks, states will still be limited to sharing evidence for not comprising cyber operations and revealing sensitive data. For this reason, the research proposal suggests that rather than setting evidentiary standards, the method of zero-knowledge proofs could solve the problem in question. It could allow states to prove cyberattacks' provenance and attribute them to other states without revealing sensitive information. Being the first study to address such a question with zero-knowledge proofs, it should, therefore, be of value to policymakers, researchers, and students in the field of international security.