Cyber Round Up: Belgium to Join NATO CCDCOE, Anonymous ‘Intel’ Encounters Credibility Issues, U.S. Congressional Commission Recommends Consideration of Hackbacks
Belgium to Join NATO CCDCOE (CCDCOE): Belgium is set to join the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Centre of Excellence (“CCDCOE”) as a Sponsoring Nation, according to the organization’s website. According to the website, the CCDCOE is a “knowledge hub” that focuses on interdisciplinary applied research and development in the field of cyber security. Belgium already plays an important role in several cyber defense cooperation efforts in the region, the post continued. The post specifies that the status of “Sponsoring Nation” is designation reserved for NATO members nations. Belgium will join current Sponsoring Nations, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the organization reported. Non-NATO members have also joined, including Austria and Finland, and hold the “Contributing Participants” status, which is designated for non-NATO members, concludes the post. The CCDCOE’s post can be found here.
Anonymous ‘Intel’ Encounters Credibility Issues (Breibart): After Anonymous released a list of alleged “ISIS targets”, the group is under fire for releasing bad intel, according to Breibart. The article specified that the U.S. authorities announced that claims made by the group warning about possible threats were not credible. As a result, members of the hacktivist group have begun to distance themselves from the social media accounts associated with the group, the article continued. Even other hacktivist groups have criticized Anonymous, according to the report. The full article can be found here. Releasing information haphazardly causes intelligence blunders such as this, and may result in innocent actors being targets of attacks, cyber or physical. Perhaps counterterrorism operations should be left to governments with oversight and accountability mechanisms, rather than anonymous parties with little to zero obligation or willingness to accept responsibility.
U.S. Congressional Commission Recommends Consideration of Hackbacks (USCC.GOV): The U.S.-China Economics and Security Review Commission (the “Commission”) has released its 2015 Annual Report to the Congress. The report covers U.S.-China economic and trade relations and security and foreign policy issues involving China. According to the report, the Commission recommends that Congress should consider whether to allow private companies that have been hacked to engage in counterintrusions, i.e., hackback, to recover, erase or alter data that has been stolen by bad actors. Additionally, the Commission recommended that Congress consider the feasibility of developing a foreign intelligence cyber court that will hear evidence from U.S. victims of cyber attacks and ultimately decide whether the U.S. government may take counterintrusion operations on the behalf of the victim. The full 2015 Annual Report can be found here. The Executive Summary and Recommendations can be found here.
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