At the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs in New York a few weeks ago, the creator of Endgame, Chris Rouland, lobbied for broader hackback authority to be given to government agencies and private firms. However, as Forbes reports, Rouland was speaking for himself and not as an Endgame executive. Rouland stepped down as chief executive last year.
Rouland explained:
Let’s say someone takes ten million dollars in gold bullion [from you] and you call 9-11 and they don’t call you back for a week. When do you go get it? Because for me it’s probably that night. And I think that’s a realistic metaphor of where corporations are today. They’re losing millions of dollars and it’s so challenging for governments to help them, I think we have to enable them to do it themselves.
Currently, hackback is prohibited by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Similarly, as discussed in the Forbes piece, taking back “stolen data stored on an unprotected third-party server remains a violation of the CFAA.”
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