The third SYN-of-the-week is WRATH.
Wrath is action taken in vengeance, often associated with an “eye for an eye” mentality. Wrath in the digital space can take on cyber-physical dimensions and/or have unintended, destructive consequences.
An example of wrath at the individual level is swatting. Swatting is a form of criminal harassment where the aggressor makes a fraudulent call to emergency services with the goal of having an armed unit dispatched to the victim’s address. Some of the more prominent examples of swatting have started with online disputes resulting in irrevocable and deadly consequences IRL (ex. https://tinyurl.com/mr2drf23 ). Swatting is susceptible to misattribution and unexpected repercussions to both involved parties and innocent bystanders.
At the organizational level, wrath takes the form of “hacking back”; sometimes confused with “active defense” (see: https://tinyurl.com/mr7aeybf for a good discussion). Hacking back is where an organization detects an attack, crosses boundaries outside of their own network(s) and takes active steps to identify and actively hack back at the attacker’s systems. Hacking back is most likely illegal in the organization’s jurisdiction ( https://tinyurl.com/3jzrh8xc ) and complicated by the fact that attackers are distributed globally making hacking back also a matter of international law ( https://tinyurl.com/m788mcyp ). While in the moment hacking back may seem like reasonable recourse, it has practical dangers such as misattribution and unintended impacts to other organizations’ systems and networks ( https://tinyurl.com/37kx9jnc ).
The counterbalance to wrath is FORETHOUGHT.
While wrath leads you down a path of tunnel vision to a short-sighted decision, forethought allows you to break out of that tunnel and see the potential, negative side effects of that decision (short term, long term, legal and practical). Forethought can be enhanced by preparedness. Understanding your threat landscape and designing your defenses for it can help reduce susceptibility to wrath’s tunnel vision ( https://tinyurl.com/mrx26www ). Table top exercises can also help individuals prepare for cyber incidents and be ready to make more measured decisions in the heat of the moment ( https://tinyurl.com/5n8v66c3 ).
Image: https://labs.openai.com/s/7NO9y2xnA8UR2SuAlrkMAfuv
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