(Google engineers thought seriously in 2009 about doing harm to servers in China where attacks on the company had originated, before cooler heads prevailed.) Periodically there have been movements in Congress to make hacking back legal—often under the rubric of “active defense”—as a way of letting cyber victims create some deterrence. Regardless of whether it would work or not, hacking back would certainly be satisfying for companies. It could also start a war.
