Amidst the balloons and excitement (and smoke machines
and procedural kerfuffles) at the GOP Convention in Cleveland, one
provision in the party platform has caught the eye of cyber
experts. For the first time, an American political party has
explicitly extended the concept of self-defense to cyberspace,
stating that "users have a self-defense right to deal with
hackers as they see fit."
Experts have long been divided on the wisdom of
encouraging reprisals by cyber-attack victims against
attackers – so-called "hack backs." One reason is
that attribution is exceptionally difficult. A sophisticated hacker
can cloak the origination point of an attack, making it hard to hit
the actual attacker. Moreover, since legitimate technical systems
are rarely designed for offensive purposes, hack-back measures can
cause more problems than the original hack.
