UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres (pictured) expects the likelihood of cyber attacks in wars to increase and talked up the need for international rules to mitigate their impact.

“Episodes of cyber warfare between states already exist. What is worse is that there is no regulatory scheme for that type of warfare, it is not clear how the Geneva Convention or international humanitarian law applies to it,” Guterres said in a speech at the University of Lisbon, Reuters reported.

“I am absolutely convinced that…the next war will begin with a massive cyber attack to destroy military capacity…and paralyse basic infrastructure such as the electric networks,” he added.

Last week, US special counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russian citizens and three companies for using social media to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election. He said the UN was a platform which could work out rules “to guarantee a more humane character” of conflicts around technology.

A group of NATO allies in 2017 said they were drawing up cyber warfare principles to guide their armed forces, Reuters stated.

Some of them believe shutting down a power plant through a cyber attack could be more effective than air strikes.