FBI doesn’t want companies to hack in retaliation by Jonathan Vanian.
From the post:
Major banks, retailers, manufacturers and other companies are fed up with the increasing amount of cyber attacks and are exploring hacking in revenge, something the FBI doesn’t seem too keen on, according to a Bloomberg report.
Based on the perception that the U.S. government is not doing enough to stop data breaches, some companies are looking to hack into criminal networks and take back their goods as well as stop future breaches. To help with the retaliation hacks, these companies are supposedly working with security firms.
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Do you think the FBI is also unsympathetic to relation hacking for issuance of National Security Letters and FISA court orders?
I ask because in many ways U.S. citizens and companies are in more danger from their own government than any foreign or domestic hackers. True, Sony took an enormous hit recently but sixth graders are often victimized by eight graders. What can I say?
Corporations that take cybersecurity less seriously than they do employee theft or accurate accounting records are going to have cybersecurity issues. (full stop) No other position will enable corporations to begin moving towards a partial solution to hacking.
I say a partial solution because there will always be the potential for highly imaginative hacks but the vast majority (think Sony) could be avoided by known and routine security measures. Simply because management doesn’t know how to maintain cybersecurity does not mean no one known how. Or that hackers are rogue superminds competing with each other in an electronic ether. (Sounds great but that’s not reality. Attn: C-Suite – Tron was a movie, i.e., fiction.)
Corporations and individuals need to start taking cybersecurity seriously. It will take time to strip the U.S. government of its overreaching powers (NSLs, FISA) but you can make its illegal surveillance more difficult.
Every minute wasted on your innocent but encrypted data stream is a minute government can’t spend on some other innocent data stream. Together, we can protect each other.