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# Lecture: A Framework for Understanding Hack-and-Leak Operations
- URL: https://coeia.cloud-event.com/en/news/hack-and-leak-operations-en/
- Published: 2019-02-27T09:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-26T06:31:41.000Z
- Description: Why hack-and-leak operations sit between the intrusion and influence paradigms of cybersecurity, and what that means for cyber policy.
- Author: CoEIA Admin
- Tags: Lectures, #en

**Lecturer:** Dr. James Shires, Research Fellow, Cyber Security Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

This presentation outlines a framework for understanding hack-and-leak operations, arguing that we must rethink the effects of divulging, and fabricating, secret information in an era of ubiquitous digital technologies and severe political crises.

It suggests that hack-and-leak operations sit between two paradigms of cybersecurity. The first focuses on intrusion (unauthorized access to networks), while the second concentrates on influence (the use of digital technologies to illegitimately shape public debate). Cybersecurity specialists generally focus on intrusion, while media scholars closely analyze flows of leaked information without considering how it was obtained. The presentation argues for treating hack-and-leak operations as a distinct category of incident combining both paradigms, with specific implications for cyber policy.

James Shires researches cybersecurity in the Middle East. He holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford, an MSc from Birkbeck College, London, and a BA from the University of Cambridge, and has won awards for cybersecurity papers from the Hague Program on Cyber Norms, the German Marshall Fund and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.