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Hackback: Permitting Retaliatory Hacking By Non-State Actors As Proportionate Countermeasures To Transboundary Cyberharm, Jan E. Messerschmidt

National Security Law Program

Cyberespionage has received even greater attention in the wake of reports of persistent and brazen cyberexploitation of U.S. and Canadian firms by the Chinese military. But the recent disclosures about NSA surveillance programs have made clear that a national program of cyberdefense of private firms' intellectual property is politically infeasible. Following the lead

of companies like Google, private corporations may increasingly resort to the use of self-defense, hacking back against cross-border incursions on the Internet. Most scholarship, however, has surprisingly viewed such actions as outside the ambit of international law. This Note provides a novel account of how international law …