Experts debate global offensive cyber market

A panel of policy experts discusses the proliferation, regulation challenges, and geopolitical implications of the commercial offensive cyber capabilities market.

This Atlantic Council 5x5 article compiles expert commentary on the global market for offensive cyber capabilities (OCC), covering companies such as NSO Group and Hacking Team that supply surveillance and exploitation tools to governments. The piece discusses how the commercialization of OCC lowers the barrier for states and other actors to acquire sophisticated cyber capabilities without developing them in-house, referencing the US Commerce Department's November 2021 Entity List additions and the EU's April 2022 inquiry into NSO Group's Pegasus spyware.

Experts debate the difficulty of regulating this market compared to traditional arms control, citing challenges such as jurisdictional ambiguity, the dual-use nature of vulnerability research, and the risk that overly restrictive controls in Western nations could push talent and capabilities toward less regulated or adversarial jurisdictions like Russia and China. The article is a policy discussion piece with no specific incident, malware, or IOC content, focusing instead on geopolitical and regulatory considerations around the OCC industry.

Source reporting: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/the-5x5/the-5x5-addressing-the-global-market-for-offensive-cyber-capabilities