Trump wants to grant private cyber firms a license to hack back
Donald Trump is allowing government agencies to contract private cybersecurity companies to carry out operations against cyber-enabled transnational criminal organizations (CE-TCOs).
The US President signed a memo on Wednesday confirming a strategy hinted at earlier this year, saying participating companies can support national operations against criminals, including cyber surveillance and technical disruptions of their networks.
The latter, described as "Cyber Effects Operations," covers activities that cause "the manipulation, disruption, denial, degradation, or destruction of information systems, networks, physical or virtual infrastructure controlled by information systems, or information resident thereon."
Although the memo establishes a distinction between cyber effects operations and cyber surveillance missions, it acknowledged that the latter will also inevitably involve some disruption or manipulation of systems in order to carry out the surveillance.
Surveillance operations are designed for intel gathering, either to support further snooping or for later use in cyber effects operations, with the intent of remaining...
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