Obama Considers Sanctions After Cyberattacks
The move could help deter hackers, but China is a hard target.
The Obama administration would have to weigh the potential consequences of targeting China with sanctions in response to recent cyberattacks.
By Tom Risen
June 15, 2015 | 5:43 p.m. EDT
How the U.S. responds to the theft of millions of government workers' personal information will measure how serious the Obama administration is about cybersecurity, but the White House has to tread cautiously with a retaliatory measure it reportedly is considering.
Chinese hackers are thought to have been behind the breach of Office of Personnel Management files containing the personal information of what was originally estimated to be around 4 million current and former federal workers. But the extent of the theft could be much larger, and the White House has revealed the same hackers are thought to have breached a second OPM system containing sensitive information related to security clearances sought by government workers, including some intelligence agency and military personnel.
RELATED
Hack of OPM May Affect Every Government Worker
The White House is weighing a newly authorized form of international pressure to strike back: In April, President Barack Obama announced that economic sanctions could be used by the government to target hackers and their associates, limiting their financial and business capabilities.
When asked about the possible use of such sanctions during a press conference on Friday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the "newly available option is one that is on the table."
But there are hurdles to such an approach. For one, it's unclear whether the Chinese government sponsored the recent hacks, and the U.S. would have to clearly pin down who was responsible, says Ben FitzGerald, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
"The attribution for the hacks would need to be undeniable, and it’s unclear if that will be the case or not, despite evidence pointing strongly to China," FitzGerald says.
What's more, sanctioning the Chinese government or entities could hold greater ramifications than enacting measures against a country like North Korea, which the U.S. targeted in January following the hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment last year. China's "economic might and the interconnected nature of our economies" potentially complicates any punitive economic actions the U.S. would take, FitzGerald says.
The two countries' military relationship, meanwhile, is cordial but latent with tension and also could weigh heavily on any sanctions effort. While generals from the U.S. and China signed a cooperation pact just last week, Beijing has been aggressively pressing for territorial rights in disputed waters, and has even built artificial islands in actions the U.S. has warned against.
RELATED
Have Republicans Gone Soft on the ICANN Transition?
“Applying additional sanctions against North Korea was relatively uncontroversial – that would not be the case with China," says FitzGerald, a former IBM employee who has consulted for Australian intelligence officials. "This would be a high-profile opportunity to employ sanctions, but those efforts will almost certainly engender a strong response by the Chinese and it’s unclear whether or not the U.S. government wishes to escalate this issue right now.”
Imposing high-profile sanctions in retaliation for a suspected Chinese spy operation would also place the U.S. in an awkward position because of the international controversy about surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency.
Along with monitoring the phone calls of foreign officials, the NSA tapped traffic between data centers for Yahoo and Google and installed spyware on computers used around the world, according to documents leaked to the press by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.
In response to possibly the worst breach of government networks in history, U.S. Chief Information Officer Tony Scott has called on agencies to conduct a 30-day cybersecurity sprint to shore up online defenses. The White House has also ordered all agencies to adopt stricter HTTPS encryption by the end of 2016.
But cybersecurity alone is not enough to deter hackers, says Shawn Henry, former executive assistant director in charge of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch.
Imposing sanctions “can raise the cost and risk to the adversary and add another line of defense against state-sponsored attackers,” says Henry, now president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
RELATED
Martin O'Malley Backs Controversial Cybersecurity Bill
The White House response to the OPM hack “has the potential to be a seminal test case for the government’s developing deterrence efforts” on cybersecurity, Fitzgerald says, but bringing China-based hackers to justice will not be easy.
The Obama administration has repeatedly accused Beijing of sponsoring attacks on U.S. networks and even indicted five Chinese military members last year for hacking and economic espionage offenses. None of those suspects are have been brought to a U.S. court, however, as China and Russia rarely if ever extradite people to the U.S.
Tom Risen is a technology and business reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at trisen@usnews.com.
***
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
17062015
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC
No comments:
Post a Comment