Obama to weigh hacking response
Options range from sanctioning Russia to online counterstrikes
WASHINGTON—Now that the White House has formally accused Russia of meddling in the presidential election with cuttingedge cyberattacks and age-old information warfare, devising a response might seem fairly easy: Unleash the government’s cyberwarriors to give the Kremlin a dose of its own malware.
Technologically, that would not be too difficult, U.S. officials say. But as a matter of strategy and politics, formulating the right kind of counterstrike is not that straightforward. Tempting options
President Barack Obama’s options range from the mild — naming and shaming the Russians, as he did Friday — to the more severe, such as invoking for the first time a series of economic sanctions that he created by executive order after North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. The Justice Department could indict the Russians behind the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the email accounts of prominent individuals, as it did with members of China’s People’s Liberation Army, who have been charged with stealing industrial secrets.
Or Obama could sign a secret intelligence finding — similar to many he has issued to authorize CIA efforts in Syria or drone strikes against the Islamic State — to attack and disable Russian computer servers or expose the financial dealings of President Vladimir Putin and his oligarch friends.
While the last option is tempting, officials say, it would carry risks with the election just a month away. Attacks on online voter registration rolls could sow chaos at polling places, and the election infrastructure has never truly been tested against a power like Russia. The system that underpins U.S. democracy is not even listed as an element of the nation’s critical infrastructure, a list that includes movie theaters and the Jefferson Memorial, among other monuments. ‘Slap on the wrist’
Michael J. Morell, a former deputy director of the CIA and a veteran of many debates on the cyberweapon arsenal in the Bush and Obama administrations, said Saturday that the U.S. response had to strike at something Putin held dear. But, he added, unleashing a counterattack may not be the answer.
“Our response needs to be proportionate to the attack,” said Morell, who advises Hillary Clinton on national security matters and is widely believed to be in line for a top intelligence post if she is elected president. Criminal indictments and sanctions against individuals “are only a slap on the wrist,” he said, adding that “offensive cyberactions can’t be seen and are inconsistent with the norms we want to set in the world on cyber.”
But the challenges, as Morell acknowledges, are clear. Europe is unlikely to go along with sanctions if that means cutting off their access to the Russian gas that keeps them warm. And Voice of America programs, a relic of the Cold War, are slow to work, if they can work at all in the internet age.