On July 30, 2020, the Council of the European Union (EU) took sanctioning measures - travel ban, asset freeze - against Russian, Chinese and North Korean persons and state bodies, which engaged in cyber attacks against European companies or institutes. In theory, such a decision is welcome. This is the first time that the EU has officially recognized the reality and the dangerousness of cyber-offensives from authoritarian countries. These attacks, for those who trigger them, have the advantage of being difficult to trace and of remaining below the threshold of open warfare. They aim to penetrate the infrastructure of adversary countries (to be able to paralyze them when the time comes), to interfere in their democratic electoral processes, to spy on their high-tech companies, in order to steal their industrial secrets.
Read also: The crisis widens the scope of cyber attacks against businesses
In practice, one may wonder whether these European sanctions are up to the
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