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The Australian government recently declared that it would retaliate against hackers who attempted to target Australian firms, breaking from the customary cautious stance countries have taken to deal with global cyber threats.
“As it becomes more obvious that the majority of organisations are poorly prepared to defend themselves, I think it is justifiable for well-resourced governments to step in,” Richard Stiennon said, chief research analyst at IT-Harvest.
“I fully expect hack-back legislation to pass in response to some devastating attack visible to many voters. But I do not expect it to have teeth or change the landscape much.”
The government started the initiative in response to recent Medibank and Optus cyberattacks that revealed personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive data belonging to more than one-third of Australia’s approximately 26 million population.
The “hack-back” strategy will emphasise gathering intelligence and identifying cybercrime ring leaders and networks so that law enforcement may thwart and disrupt activities and actors from wherever.
“I believe that the US has been taking action in the cyber domain since 2010 when US Cyber Command was stood up,” Stiennon said. “Other countries like the Netherlands and Israel have also demonstrated their abilities to strike back at sophisticated attackers.”
However, security researchers have long argued that proactive measures to disrupt criminal infrastructure — or to hack back against operators — should be undertaken with prudence due to the challenges around attribution and collateral damage.
Critics have noted that hack-back initiatives are risky since threat actors can conduct attacks that look to come from somewhere else. For instance, deactivating a hosting provider that a threat actor may have exploited to execute attacks can harm innocent organisations.
According to Erick Galinkin, chief researcher of Rapid7, a business that has been a vehement opponent of hack-back legislation like ACDC, “In general, attributing an attack is quite difficult. Attribution may be one of the hardest problems in all of the cybersecurity.”
Regardless of the need for caution, the government is determined to proceed with the plan as it believes that only by taking offensive steps can it deter cyberattacks.
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