International Cybersecurity Law: Addressing Cross-Border Cybercrime and Cyber Warfare — With Special Focus on the Cambodia Cyber Scam Complex

Abstract

Cross-border cybercrime has emerged as one of the defining legal and humanitarian challenges of the twenty-first century, exposing the structural inadequacy of a world legal order premised on territorial sovereignty to govern threats that are by nature transnational, anonymous, and technologically dynamic. This article examines the international legal framework governing cross-border cybercrime and cyber warfare, with sustained attention to the Cambodia cyber scam complex — a system of industrialised, state-tolerated online fraud and human trafficking that has victimised hundreds of thousands of individuals across Asia, Africa, and beyond, and that represents perhaps the most acute contemporary illustration of the governance gaps in international cybercrime law. Drawing on international criminal law, the law of state responsibility, human rights law, and comparative domestic criminal law, the article analyses the legal dimensions of the Cambodia scam phenomenon: the criminal enterprises that operate scam compounds along Cambodia's borders; the complicity of local governance structures; the transnational money laundering ecosystems that process the proceeds; the victimisation of trafficked workers forced to perpetrate fraud; and the inadequate response of the international legal community. The article then situates the Cambodia case within the broader framework of international cybersecurity law, examining the Budapest Convention regime, the emerging United Nations Cybercrime Convention, the law governing state-sponsored cyber operations, and the enforcement gaps that allow cross-border cybercrime to flourish with virtual impunity.