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Bill Would Legalize Active Defense Against Hacks (onthewire.io)
Trailrunner7 quotes a report from On the Wire: A new bill intended to update the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act would allow victims of computer attacks to engage in active defense measures to identify the attacker and disrupt the attack. Proposed by Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), the bill would grant victims of computer intrusions unprecedented rights. Known as the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act, the legislation seeks to amend the CFAA, the much-maligned 1986 law that is used in most computer crime prosecutions. The proposed legislation includes the caveat that victims can't take any actions that destroy data on another person's computer, causes physical injury to someone, or creates a threat to public safety. The concept of active defense has been a controversial one in the security community for several years, with many experts saying the potential downside outweighs any upside. Not to mention that it's generally illegal.
Do people get the right to disrupt police/FBI hacking of their devices as well? That's probably the only hackers that would actually be disrupted by this new law, since criminal hackers use someone else's computer to hack you -- if you hack back, you're only hurting some innocent third party that had *his* computer hacked.
Way too vague, neither "disrupt" or "continued unauthorized activity" not defined; this'd very quickly result in these so-called victims in just using DDoS against anyone who they disagree with
Even a strict interpretation will lead to an eHolocaust. Attacker hijacks a machine in company A and uses it to attack company B. Company B retaliates against the machine in company A. Company A detects attack from company B and returns the favour. Multiply that by all the machines in a botnet and you can kiss goodbye to the internet.
Well, according to TFA the "active defenses" consist of "consisting of accessing without authorization the computer of the attacker to the victim’ own network to gather information in order to establish attribution of criminal activity."
So it sounds innocuous, but I do see a problem: it's a bit like pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, isn't it? You get permission to poke around on the attacker's network... to prove he's the attacker. It's not hard to dream up a lot of squirrely corner cases for that.
Also "active defense" of this sort provides the perfect cover... for hacking. You infect a competitor's computer network to launch an ineffective attack on your own, and then you invade his network with legal impunity.
It's not impossible to do a law like this right, but what are the chances?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Forget crashing a single computer. This has every oppurtunity of spreading out of control. Think hosted server fasley identifying an attack and then launching it.s own attack against another hosted server, which detects an attack and launces it own attack not against the hosted server but the server hoster and all other servers, who then retaliate. This then spreads to other server hosters who host server from the same network and you get the idea. Utterly moronic and the only purpose, the only true purpose, is to allow corporations to, whoops, sorry we attacked your political activist site by mistake, oh and the police raid and half a dozen people beaten up, well thats you fault for, saying we do bad things. Basically corrupt politicians allowing corporations to use vigilantism to attack anyone they want for any reason they want based upon evidence they self fabricate of an false flag attack, repercussion, zero. Next step corporations being able to send mercenaries to conduct a direct raid ie private police.
So I gather the penalty for a false defence attack is to be charge with a computer crime and imprisonment for the false defence attack, what no it isn't, let me fucking guess, there is no penalty what so ever for a false defence attack (that a solid sign of political corruption).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I would suggest formal Licensure for Cybersecurity professionals
Licenses mean compliance with a bureaucratic checklist, which is very different from actual competence. In a fast evolving field like computer security, the checklist will lag actual best practices by about a decade. Most existing formal computer certifications are widely considered to be negatively correlated with competence, so the track record is not good.
So what you're saying, a well regulated militia should be the only ones able to wield these weapons?