Experts warn future hack attacks on corporations could warrant military response

(Cyberwar.news) Hack attacks like those committed by North Korea against Sony Entertainment in recent months are not acts of war, per se, but they create enough economic chaos and havoc to potentially trigger a military response in the future, experts recently told TribLive.

The incident involving Sony, which delayed the planned release of the movie “The Interview,” an action comedy that spoofed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the CIA and reality TV, has set a standard for how the U.S. could respond to similar computer attacks on American companies, citizens and government systems, said Eric Jensen, professor of law and cyber warfare at Utah’s Brigham Young University.

“The biggest impact of (Sony) was that the United States took a stance,” Jensen told TribLive. “… It tells everybody else in the world that when a state attacks you and you can attribute it, you can respond — even if it’s not an attack on the state but on a state interest.”

Jensen spoke recently at the Journal of Law & Cyber Warfare Conference, an annual event in New York City attended by about 150 leading military and private-sector experts in information technology system security.

The high profile hack involving Sony not only educated the American public on the dangers of cyber warfare but it also caused a number of governments around the world to beginning taking the threat seriously, added Michael Schmitt, director of the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.

“Before Sony, there wasn’t much of this discussion about countermeasures,” said Schmitt, who also serves as a senior fellow at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence.

“When Sony happened, everyone went, ‘Whoa, can Sony respond? Can we respond? How can we respond against whom?’ So it focused, globally, attention on the issue of response,” he said.

The Obama administration policy has been to consider each breach on a case-by-case basis and base its response on the level of damage, whether loss of life occurred and what the long-term implications of a hack are estimated to be, according to Robert Clark, a cyber operational lawyer for the American Cyber Institute at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

In the United States, the lesson has been that the government will respond, on a case-by-case basis, when a computer attack causes a loss of life, destruction of property or long-lasting economic impact, said Robert Clark, cyber operational lawyer for the American Cyber Institute at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., TribLive reported.

In response to the Sony hack the Obama administration placed additional economic sanctions on North Korea, establishing what some experts have dubbed a “cyber Monroe Doctrine” for clearly stating the U.S. would extend its defense of the citizenry to online hacks of American corporations.

“The movie being the impetus? Yeah, it’s pretty stupid,” Clark said. “The opportunity to hit a major U.S. corporation? … If they wanted to make a statement, it was handed to them.”

Following the Sony hack, The Wall Street Journal noted that the attack laid bare the shortcomings between the private sector and government in working together to defend against such attacks.

As noted by Cyberwar.news hacking activity increasingly targets government officials, like the potential hack of a private email server operated by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

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See also:

http://triblive.com/usworld/nation/9366827-74/cyber-computer-sony#axzz3qjLjv6aq

http://www.glitch.news/2015-10-13-revealed-hillary-clintons-private-email-servers-were-wide-open-to-hacking-from-china-korea-and-germany.html