Bill proposed to let companies 'hack back'

A newly-proposed bill in Congress seeks to let companies go on the offensive if they suffer a network breach or intrusion.

A new piece of draft legislation filed late last week would let victims of a cyber breach or intrusion access the computer of an attacker to disrupt the incident and gather information to attribute the hack, our sister publication FCW reported Friday.

The Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act 2.0 -- also called a "hack back" bill -- would modify the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to require affected entities notify law enforcement when they use active cyber defense measures. Breach victims would also have to tell law enforcement when they work to recover or destroy data with those techniques.

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) filed a discussion draft for the new bill that adds provisions covering the law enforcement notifications to a prior draft issued in March.

Added language would sunset the bill after two years and includes exceptions for beaconing technology.