Thread by @JABrunner88

THREAD: The Biden admin has been quietly trying to address the ransomware problem w/ a new interagency task force, per @politico. The headline mentions #hackingback, but the story doesn't give much detail about that idea or its history. Allow me . . .
politico.com/news/2021/07/1…

2/ "Hacking back" is a colloquial term used for offensive measures in cyberspace. Think of it like a spectrum, with stationary defenses (i.e., firewalls) on one side, and more agressive tools (i.e, wiping data) on the other. Hacking back falls closer to the latter category.

3/ More detail here spfusa.org/research/gray-…

4/ Hacking back has been kicked around as a potential solution to cyber intrusions since at least 2017, when @RepTomGraves & @SenatorSinema introduced the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act, providing exceptions to the CFAA. Graves reupped it in 2019. congress.gov/bill/115th-con…

5/ H/T to @BobbyChesney, who has covered these legislative proposals to revise the CFAA and allow for/encourage #hackingback extensively for @lawfareblog.
lawfareblog.com/hackback-back-…

6/ Others have looked at it from an international law perspective. @RosenzweigP has examined the international law implications using a letter of marque and reprisal regime, among other legal tools, as has . . .

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

7/ . . . former GC of the Air Force/Space Force Thomas Ayres, who recently argued that we should treat hackers as pirates on international waters.
wsj.com/articles/a-mar…

8/ The "hackers as pirates" idea become more prominent lately, which makes sense - hackers & pirates have similar motivations, use similar tactics, and both can be used as proxies to asymetrically benefit State actors (i.e., Russia, China).

9/ And it has gained key support. Last month, @CyberDASD agreed w/ the above analogy: "I’ve actually been thinking a lot about . . . international law and piracy as it relates to cybersecurity, and I think it’s a very instructive one for us as a nation.”
armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-re…

10/ The military began to adopt this active defense/#hackback stance a few years ago with it's now settled "Defend Forward," posture, as @CYBERCOM_DIRNSA & @sultanofcyber laid out last year.
foreignaffairs.com/articles/unite…

11/ And the FBI is getting better at working w/ companies to attribute and take action against hackers, as they did when they clawed back millions from the Colonial Pipeline ransomware intrusion.
cnbc.com/2021/06/07/us-…

12/ The @WHNSC will still need to think through all the escalation implications related to allowing private actors to take on governmental authority in cyberspace. But it seems like #hackingback is a permanent part of the conversation. [End]