The Politics of Public Attribution

In hacker culture to dox means to drop someone’s private information on the internet for the public to see – a common practice amongst hackers. Cybersecurity researchers were surprised when intelligence agencies, who traditionally prized their secrecy, followed suit and revealed details on other countries’ cyber operations. An increasing number of states have published information regarding cyber espionage operations discovered on networks within their jurisdiction. However, it is unclear, what motivates such behaviour. Understanding why these states chose to publish sensitive details is important, as practices of strategic interaction in cybersecurity are only just emerging. This paper will offer a rough account of the identified practices in selected empirical cases and offer first possible explanations on what the respective strategic communities may have wanted to achieve when releasing such information. The paper forms preparation for a larger empirical research project looking into this question.