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Should Private Companies Be Allowed To Hit Back At Hackers? (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The former director of the NSA and the U.S. military's cybersecurity branch doesn't believe private companies should be allowed to hit back at hackers. "If it starts a war, you can't have companies starting a war. That's an inherently governmental responsibility, and plus the chances of a company getting it wrong are fairly high," Alexander said during a meeting with a small group of reporters on Monday. During a keynote he gave at a cybersecurity conference in Manhattan, Alexander hit back at defenders of the extremely common, although rarely discussed or acknowledged, practice of revenge hacking, or hack back. During his talk, Alexander said that no company, especially those attacked by nation state hackers, should ever be allowed to try to retaliate on its own.
Using the example of Sony, which was famously hacked by North Korea in late 2014, Alexander said that if Sony had gone after the hackers, it might have prompted them to throw artillery into South Korea once they saw someone attacking them back. "We can give Sony six guys from my old place there," he said, presumably referring to the NSA, "and they'd beat up North Korea like red-headed stepchild -- no pun intended." But that's not a good idea because it could escalate a conflict, and "that's an inherently governmental responsibility. So if Sony can't defend it, the government has to." Instead, Keith argued that the U.S. government should be able to not only hit back at hackers -- as it already does -- but should also have more powers and responsibilities when it comes to stopping hackers before they even get in. Private companies should share more data with the U.S. government to prevent breaches, ha said.
Using the example of Sony, which was famously hacked by North Korea in late 2014, Alexander said that if Sony had gone after the hackers, it might have prompted them to throw artillery into South Korea once they saw someone attacking them back. "We can give Sony six guys from my old place there," he said, presumably referring to the NSA, "and they'd beat up North Korea like red-headed stepchild -- no pun intended." But that's not a good idea because it could escalate a conflict, and "that's an inherently governmental responsibility. So if Sony can't defend it, the government has to." Instead, Keith argued that the U.S. government should be able to not only hit back at hackers -- as it already does -- but should also have more powers and responsibilities when it comes to stopping hackers before they even get in. Private companies should share more data with the U.S. government to prevent breaches, ha said.
No, not unless regular people are allowed to do the same.
One of the most BASIC things to do in hacking, is cover your traces by making it LOOK like you're someone else.
So, naturally the best way to harm corporation X, would be to hack corporation Y, but leave lots of evidence that it was corporation X, thus causing Y to attack X.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
Absolutely! We can treat this as an assault, in that the aggressor loses the legal ground and the victim has a reasonable defense. Even when the defense is an offensive response.
s/responsibility/profit center/
Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
These guys can't secure their servers in the most basic ways, and they want to be allowed to do their own target id (I'm supposed to believe they won't screw that up?) and then take offensive action?
They'll attack the right target perhaps 1 out of 20 events. They'll attack someone at random every so often and then say 'whoops! We screwed up! Sorry!'.
No, these corporate bozos are not the people we want dealing with such threats.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.
No company should ever be allowed to take the law in to is own hands. Their response to any such issue should be to close the holes and repair the damage. Let law enforcement handle the rest.
That is unless we want a ShadowRun type society where corporations can field their own private police forces and armies. But if this came to pass I doubt we would get the magic that came with it.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I practice the art of counter hacking on occasion but do it comfortably behind a slew of different proxies or remote shell accounts that are not registered directly to my employer. That way my employer maintains plausible deniability and cannot be held accountable for anything I do. However, I do have a unspoken agreement with upper management that I am allowed the latitude required to mitigate any and all attacks possible. So if that means knocking off sites with enormous packet floods or even exploiting their weaknesses thru a vulnerability, they will stand by me.
The net is still the wild west and will always be the wild west, regardless of the words written in law books.
In the same sentence? From the guy who perjured himself in congress? Hackback is a bad idea for those who might get the wrong target, sure. But the crowd that gets our guys, as well as guilty and innocent around the world killed and maimed for obscure ends in the pursuit of the petrodollar...shouldn't be doing that either. Just fix your bugs and holes and let it all bounce off. You need to do that anyway.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
This is just asking for trouble, in the same way any home-grown attempts to control crime tend to be.
Look, you want to have a gun for self-defense? You can make that argument, but this is like saying you can go hunting the guys who robbed you.
What is this, the laziest application of Betteridge's law of headlines in /. history? Of course not. Vigilantism is _never_ a good idea. It takes years of training and constant surveillance to apply force and violence even as evenly as police do and let's face it, they screw it up all the time. You want some random yahoo who's probably mad as hell their severs just got DDOS'd doing it?
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They should be required to follow the law as any individual would be required. The last thing we need is for businesses to be above the law or rather to have laws applied differently to businesses than they are to individuals. If businesses can hit back then individuals suffering attacks should be able to hit back too.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
Aren't their documented incidents of retaliation against hackers harming innocent third party internet businesses? That's why we let law enforcement hand out consequences instead of engaging in vigilante justice. (That being said the guys who chased after the Texas church shooter are awesome!)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Lets fry their cerebellum. #WilliamGibson
Of course, this power would never, ever be abused, right? That would just never happen, right folks?
And if they accidentally nuke your PC and its data, well..."Oops, real sorry about that. No you can't sue us, it's totally legal! What's that? You want to sue? Great, we'll see your lawyer and raise you 50 lawyers with virtually unlimited funds. See ya in court, sucker."
No, they should not, because we all fucking know exactly what kind of abuse(s) this will lead to.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Sharing data with the US government is going to PREVENT breaches?!?
This is akin to saying a gang raped woman should then go out and buy a pack of condoms to prevent an STI. The US government has been the source of more breaches than any other agency. Have we forgotten that it's a non-disclosed zero day vulnerability that the US government found, weaponized, and then let out into the wild that caused the single largest series of ransomeware attacks in history? The idea that the US government is in any way interested in preventing breaches is laughable. Sorry, folks are on their own.
Yes
He makes for a bad argument. First, except for N. Korea, every single other country would rather not admit they were behind the cyber attack and given the US's military strength, they will deny deny deny. No way they will admit would EVER hit back with military might.
But while proof of ID is impossible in hacking, suspicion is easy and usually accurate. When it comes to hacking, it's not that hard to tell who did it by examining motives. When the government hits back, everyone knows it's the government. When Sony strikes back, everyone knows it' Sony. Sony would likely publish N Korean secrets, while the NSA would likely try for something more physical like cutting the power to a nuclear processing plant.
As such, the government is more likely to piss off North Korea into attacking militarily. then Sony.
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If I'm attacked by a gunman, I can call police, who will then call military as needed, and my government will defend me. So give me the number of the person I'm to call when my company is being hacked. I'll happily call it. . .a few thousand times a day.
No. Absolutely not. We do not want corporations to have offensive capabilities that are beyond the legal system. How do we know that the corporation will only retaliate against a real perpetrator? What checks would there be on their paramilitary power?
It's bad enough that we have transnational corporations with what amounts to their own private armies. Don't give them more power under any circumstances. If they don't like the response that the FBI, Interpol and other law enforcement agencies are making to attacks on their systems, maybe they could start paying their taxes so law enforcement can improve its response.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I can easily imagine such a retaliatory attack to go awry in a big way with all kinds of collateral damage.
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Attribution is extremely difficult, especially if all you have to go on is forensic artifacts which are easily forged. I don't believe any private organization is going to be in a position to arrive at an attribution that would legitimize a hack back situation. That doesn't mean I don't believe in active defense. Beacons in documents, etc. which let you know if/when/where they have been opened is one thing. Launching a cyber assault based on that is another.
Hell, even most governments, short of corroborating SIGINT or HUMINT is going to be hard pressed to do attribution and it would take a lot for me to agree that a kinetic response were justified -- basically a confesion from the perps.
As I was reading this, I was trying to figure out where Alexander was going with it. Then I read the last sentence - "Private companies should share more data with the U.S. government to prevent breaches, ha said.". I guess "Let us fight back for you" is the new version of "Think of the children" or "Stop terrorists"?
Long time ago in the newsgroups. Programmers came into Alt.Cracks (where their programs were cracked) and uploaded Trojans, Virus's and huge text files titled as a book of some sort. The text files were just to waste bandwidth. They read well for awhile (few sentences) then just went south, no matter where one started. I wish I'd of saved one now, the largest piece of nonsense I've come across.
Just imagine a company like Equifax going on the offensive: I would estimate a 95% chance that they would be utterly ineffective, with a 5% chance of them screwing up something they have not already broken. The black hats would have a field day getting companies to attack one another, vital infrastructure, or - for bonus points - themselves.
The one thing companies need to do right now in this domain is to get serious about practicing good security, and if they do, the issue of retaliation will be moot.
That strategy has been around for a long time in many forms, and has a name:
"Let's you and him fight."
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What does the "private company" expect to find in 2017?
An ISP ip connected to one user and their own desktop computer downloading files in real time?
An interesting person is going to use a staging server with a fast connection and the secure storage to compress, sort, decode, look, compress encrypt the files gathered.
The files will then be passed onto a fourth party and become harder for a later investigation to connect back to any sites, people, ISP, ip.
The days of a 56k modem, a desktop computer, a user risking their own ip to enter and download from some protected network are over.
Any smart person able to enter a site would be able to do so commanding a third party computer to do the networking for them.
That ip looking around some protected network is going to be some other random nations fast "networked" university account, private sector, random ISP account that got taken over for some time..
Reach out and mess with that other nation and their systems in a world of "hacking back"?
That other nations ISP, university, private sector will try and hunt down the "been hacked" event...
Just two big internet pipes pushing packets with the interesting person moving to a new server to try again.
The mythical 56K modem on an exact ip direct to a persons home with their computer is not part of this decades of cyber security thinking.
The "hack back" might work for a stolen laptop with owner installed software that broadcasts it new location.
Turn on the mic and cam? But thats for a well understood stolen computer on a new network.
Not some random computer network that looks like it is doing "things" due to "ip".
If consumer grade malware had a set 'encrypted" ip expected to stay secure for its command and control that was discovered?
That might be a more isolated computer system that could be looked at.
The idea that anyone with skills looking deep into secure network did not use a staging server or any other distant network to cover their activities would not be the best random ip to go looking around in.
Work with other nations, experts, networks, don't just reach out to a long list of ip's in real time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I feel completely certain that given this ability that corporations would never use this ability to hurt critics, business rivals, individuals who they think might be violating their terms (even if unpublished) or any other person or piece of equipment that is internet connected. Corporate entities never do any wrong and always respect the law and the right of others.
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Private companies should share more data with the U.S. government to prevent breaches, ha said.
How does THAT sound like a good idea? The NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY can't even keep it's own data secure, let alone other government agencies with other data. The only thing sharing more data with them will do is encourage more hacking of the government because it is easier than hacking the actual companies
Are you fucking nuts? You want to hand the same corporations that sue grannies that don't even own a computer for downloading death metal songs the right to hack anything they want with impunity?
Isn't it bad enough that they can abuse the legal system that way?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Using the example of Sony, which was famously hacked by North Korea in late 2014, Alexander said that if Sony had gone after the hackers, it might have prompted them to throw artillery...
Except 'someone' did gone after the hackers (not specific target but North Korea) and DDoS their internet. Still no artillery thrown, so better use a different example.
It's funny though, this article wanted you to pick yes or no, but you can't pick yes. That's because if they can hack back, they wouldn't have gotten hacked in the first place. So we're left with no, not because they aren't allow but because they don't know how to hack back.
And stop taking legal action against the people who tried to help you in the first place. Give them a reporting system and free stuff instead and all your security problems will be located in about 10 minutes.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Nobody should be allowed to do that, neither private companies nor law enforcement. It's called due process under judicial oversight.
"Alexander said that if Sony had gone after the hackers, it might have prompted them to throw artillery into South Korea once they saw someone attacking them back"
Throw artillery? That would be a good trick. I have a mental image of brawny NK soldiers hefting howitzers over the DMZ into South Korea.
Doesn't anyone now know how artillery works? I think the submitter meant "fire artillery".
"you can't have companies starting a war. That's an inherently governmental responsibility" I would argue that it's the government's responsibility to prevent war when possible and never to start one!
Some half-wit multinational tells their new hire with a cert in security to hack back... and the fool doesn't begin to have the experience to distinguish between a direct malicious actor and someone's grandparent's infected home computer, and the fry it, along with all their pics of their kids and grandkids, and they have lost everything, and don't know why. Certainly, they won't know who to sue for that action....
And double Fuck No!
This is a laughably bad introduction chapter to a cyberpunk dystopian hellscape where corporations employ their own hit-squads, hackers, and armies.
There's no real difference from breaking into a hotel lobby at night and trashing it, peeking a the guest registry, and robbing the cash drawer. Should corporations be able to break into a person's home, trash it, peek at their mail, and rob their wallet? Just because they suspect you might have been the one to throw paint around in their lobby? No? Then this too is a bad idea.
Right, and if you find anyone on your "cyber" ground threatening you, you can kill..... their connection.
Even stand your ground laws don't let you drive 4 hours back to their home, kick in their door, and shoot their family.