Christiansen, John (SEA) wrote: >I don't think this is funny at all. I have actually been doing some >theoretical work on active defense (or "hack back") as a potentially >legitimate response to some kinds of network-based threats. While I am not >convinced it is necessarily proper (and am also not convinced it is >necessarily improper, either), it is very clear it would need to be >undertaken carefully, with a high degree of reliability in target >identification and proportionality of response to risk, where other recourse >is not reasonably possible. This kind of statement at best reflects a lack >of thought about or insight into the issues, and at worst may be taken by >irresponsible intellectual property claimants (or wannabes) as a license to >do what they want. > Uh, oookaaayyy .... sounds to me like you haven't thought about this very much. Attacks are almost *always* launched from a computer belonging to an innocent 3rd party, who just happened to have been cracked before you were. So if you "hack back", you almost certainly are committing an offense against an innocent party who has already been victimized by the attacker. To be fair, John did say "with a high degree of reliability in target identification." But that's problematic: with an attack coming from a remote machine, where you have no access, and the legitimate owner is very likely both inattentive and clueless, just how is it that you might reliably establish identity? So if you do the risk analysis, "hack back" is almost *always* the wrong thing to do. Crispin -- Crispin Cowan, Ph.D. http://immunix.com/~crispin/ Chief Scientist, Immunix http://immunix.com http://www.immunix.com/shop/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jun 19 2003 - 00:27:17 PDT