Cyber Crime is Skyrocketing – And the U.S. has a New Plan
With the increased cyber crime the world is facing today, countries are beginning to look for alternative methods to divert malware attacks. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency is doing just that. In recent reports, there have been talks of rerouting malware attacks back to the same sender it came from. Essentially, a “return to sender” method. Lieutenant-general, Vincent Stewart of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency recently stated,
“Once we’ve isolated malware, I want to reengineer it and prep to use it against the same adversary who sought to use against us. We must disrupt to exist.”
This may be a way to “teach the hackers a lesson”. But how many times have we heard how difficult it is to catch cyber criminals because they leave virtually no tracks? How would spending the time and money to implement this, be worthwhile? Could it be? Perhaps, but it’s a long shot. Also, who is to say the hacker won’t see the “return to sender” occurring and reroute it elsewhere — thus making the U.S. government appear as a hacker to an innocent third-party?
There are several ways to look at this, but perhaps we focus on the biggest flaw of them all. Why not stop the malware attack from beginning in the first place? Block the threat, and you won’t have to return it back to the original sender. Or work on remediation efforts. Most solution providers have been complacent. They haven’t advanced their technology to effectively combat today’s cyber threats. Instead, they have continued to use an archaic blacklist approach which has proven time and time again, it is not effective.
Instead of consistently hoping for the best, knowing your slowing catching up to the hacker — why have the best security solution and stay one step ahead? By implementing a default-deny approach, or application whitelisting technology, any unknown threats will be tested and proven safe before they are allowed to execute. Thus, catching each new malware variant before it can worm its way into devices.
What are your thoughts on the government’s latest proposed approach?
