Preventing or Mitigating Adversarial Supply Chain Attacks: A Legal Analysis

Abstract

The world is currently strongly connected through both the internet at large, but also the very supply chains which provide everything from food to infrastructure and technology. The supply chains are themselves vulnerable to adversarial attacks, both in a digital and physical sense, which can disrupt or at worst destroy them. In this paper, we take a look at two examples of such successful attacks to put the idea of Supply Chain Attacks into perspective, and analyse how EU and national law can prevent these attacks or otherwise punish companies which do not try to mitigate them at all possible costs. We find that the current types of national regulation are not technology specific enough, and cannot force or otherwise mandate the correct parties who could play the biggest role in preventing supply chain attacks to do everything in their power to mitigate them. But, current EU law is on the right path, and further \textcolorblack development of this may be what is necessary to combat these large threats, as national law may fail at properly regulating companies when it comes to cybersecurity.