Quote:
Originally Posted by Evans, Marv
I'm just a computer user, but I've always wondered why somebody doesn't develop malware that they can let loose on these turds. Something that will trace back to the sender and fry the hard drive or something. I heard a comment one time it was illegal to do that in this country, but I bet Uncle Sam can do it along with the Chinese, Russians, etc., etc.
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It's currently illegal for citizens & corporations to hack back, though when I was last involved with this sort of thing, we were attempting to define something called "active defense" of a network where there were some countermeasures you could deploy outside of your own network. Never heard what became of that proposal.
The biggest problem is accurate attribution. It's nearly impossible to tell where the attack actually came from. Sure, it's easy to trace back 1 or 2 servers, but those are already compromised by the bad guys. Usually the owners of those machines don't even know they've been hacked.
I've seen investigators take months to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, who the bad guy/country really is. The Chinese Army has at least one entire brigade dedicated to exploiting vulnerabilities in US and other networks. The US has *significantly* fewer on the exploitation side. The vast majority of resources are applied to network defense. It's the biggest, most expensive game of whack-a-mole in the world.
Disclaimer: I used to work for US Cyber Command