Hacked Companies Fight Back With Controversial Steps

PatPending writes with this report on companies taking aggressive steps to deal with electronic attacks: "Known in the cyber security industry as "active defense" or "strike-back" technology, the reprisals range from modest steps to distract and delay a hacker to more controversial measures. Security experts say they even know of some cases where companies have taken action that could violate laws in the United States or other countries, such as hiring contractors to hack the assailant's own systems. Other security experts say a more aggressive posture is unlikely to have a significant impact in the near term in the overall fight against cybercriminals and Internet espionage. Veteran government and private officials warn that much of the activity is too risky to make sense, citing the chances for escalation and collateral damage." If you've been involved in such an action, how did it work out for you?

Comments

Stop playing the troll's game !!

[Taco Cowboy]

One of the troll's aim is for others to repeat "mcpc"

What you are doing is just that, repeating it, 4 times

Stop playing that troll's game

Stop repeating "mcpc"

Control your temptation

Re:Stop playing the troll's game !!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that tells the search engine not to follow the links in the comments. I fimd the comment just fine with Google

Re:Stop playing the troll's game !!

[DarkOx]

Lets call it MyCleanPc not mcpc, which is really close to the trade name MCPc; MCPc is a legitimate reseller and professional services organization. I am former employee of MCPc and I can tell you when I worked there they always treated me well, and did right by their customers too.

Please don't conflate their name MyCleanPc which seems to have a somewhat dubious reputation and is a different company.

Re:Not true that fighting back doesn't work.

[bky1701]

Denial of Service is difficult to defend against, but it is impossible to retaliate against, since it universally uses botnets. It is not "hacking," either. You basically have no recourse of any kind in that situation other than some not-so-useful technical stopgaps to mitigate damage. If you go after people who "attacked you," you're simply further hurting innocent civilians, and deserve to be slapped with the same jail time as the original attackers.

In the case of actual hacking, I have no sympathy. Use proper security and you will not need to worry about it. Unlike denial of service, most commonly exploited security holes are easily fixed - especially if you know they exist (which extortion implies.) Trying to hack back while you have security holes still present in your systems is asking for serious trouble.

Re:Not true that fighting back doesn't work.

[rtaylor]

Many botnet clients apply security patches to prevent others from taking the machine.