A Vigilante Hacker Took Down North Korea’s Internet. Now He’s Taking Off His Mask
“That’s not nice, and it’s not a good norm,” says Schneider. She says that much of the US government’s slow approach to cyberattacks stems from its care to ensure it avoids unintentionally hitting civilians as well as breaking international law or triggering dangerous blowback. Still, Schneider concedes that Caceres and Angus have a point: The US could be using its cyber forces more, and some of the explanations for why it doesn’t amount to bureaucracy. “There are good reasons, and then there are bad reasons,” says Schneider. “Like, we have complicated organizational politics, we don’t know how to do things differently, we’re bad at using this type of talent, we’ve been doing it this way for 50 years, and it worked well for dropping bombs.” America’s offensive hacking has, by all appearances, gotten less aggressive and less nimble over the past half decade, Schneider points out. Starting in 2018, for instance, General Paul Nakasone, then the head of Cyber Command, advocated a “defend forward” strategy aimed at taking cyber conflict to the enemy’s network rather …