Opinion: The Mueller report won’t fix the problem underlying it all
By David Ignatius David Ignatius Columnist covering foreign affairs Email Bio Follow Columnist March 21 at 7:15 PM When the debris settles after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III completes his investigation into Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election, the United States will still be left with the underlying problem that triggered the probe in the first place: the threat of malicious cyberattacks against political parties, corporations and anybody else who uses the Internet.
U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency have already gone on the offensive against Moscow. Last fall, their joint Russia Small Group secretly “hacked back,” in effect, against Russia’s Internet Research Agency, briefly shutting down some of its computers. The aim was to deter the Russians from meddling in the 2018 midterm elections, and it seems to have worked.
U.S. history offers an unlikely lesson in how cyberoffense might be enhanced and also regulated, as explained by Michael Chertoff, former secretary of homeland security, in his recent book “Exploding Data.” But, Chertoff cautioned in an interview, “Don’t try this at home!” Meaning, companies should avoid any retaliatory action that might be illegal under U.S. or foreign law, or that would trigger counterreprisals that would make the problem even worse.
Cyber experts warn that active defense is a slippery slope. A honeypot can identify invaders. But it can also lure them to gobble malicious software that disables the attackers’ network or to steal false documents that deliberately mislead the attackers. And because attackers hide in servers that aren’t their own, a reprisal meant to target malicious hackers could take down a hospital or university.
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