Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S.: How to Retaliate in Cyber Attacks Debated

An AP newswire article by Lolita C. Baldor , via MSNBC.com, reports that:

In the murky world of computer espionage, the United States faces hard choices on how to retaliate when government or privately owned networks come under cyber attack, senior military and intelligence officials said Tuesday.

As the administration grapples with how best to defend its computer networks, debate is raging over how far the United States can go in pursuit of cybercriminals, and even what constitutes a digital act of war.

The most immediate challenge is to identify the hacker, terrorist or enemy nation that launched the attack in vast and anonymous cyberspace, officials said.

That hurdle is complicated by privacy debates over how deeply the government can wade into privately owned systems to investigate threats, and how it should handle attacks against a company, as opposed to a federal agency.

posted by Fergie @ 6/02/2009 08:00:00 PM