Cybersecurity

Will We Ever Solve Cybersecurity’s “Attribution Problem?”

...The attribution problem is, essentially, that it’s hard to know with any certainty who is responsible for malicious activity that happens online. This makes it difficult to retaliate against the responsible parties and complicates a lot of issues related to cyberwar, deterrence, and the overarching question faced by private companies and nation states alike: How should they deal with their enemies in cyberspace?

That’s a hard question to answer—much harder if you’re talking about a large-scale espionage data breach or interruption of critical infrastructure than if you’re talking about a guy who got into the email account of Dorothy Bush Koch and broadcasted a message about her father’s health. And Lazăr did take precautions to cover his tracks, routing his online activity through Russian servers so it would be harder to trace back to him.