WASHINGTON, October 29 (RIA Novosti) — Private companies should not use the law of talion, taking revenge over the entities, which are suspected to be hacking them, warned Joel Brenner, a former senior counsel at the NSA and and head of US counterintelligence under the Director of National Intelligence.
"It must be our public policy. We cannot encourage, must discourage companies from doing this. Otherwise we are doing the equivalent of issuing letters of mark," said Brenner at a Tuesday Government Cybersecurity Forum.
Brenner emphasized that private companies, subject to espionage or theft, should not retaliate against their attackers through offensive cyberoperations, when the question was put to him by a member of the audience.
Brenner also said that, "we can't issue letters of mark and give to anybody in the private sector the ability, the right to launch an operation that could have international consequences at a nationstate level. It's too dangerous."
In the current security environment, private companies often have little recompense when their security is breached or their networks are hacked. While some experts, like Brenner, argue strongly against "hacking back," others believe it is an effective way to settle the score, particularly when criminal charges, like the Justice Department's charges against five Chinese military hackers, are unlikely to result in prosecution.
Brenner argued on the other hand that if the government is unable to protect its citizens from this type of crime, "the fundamental deal that underlies a civic order is in doubt." Under those conditions, he continued, "we are seeing some people doing some risky things."
