Military Asserts Right To Respond To Cyberattacks 177
Hugh Pickens writes "AP reports that National Security Agency director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander says the US should counter computer-based attacks swiftly and strongly and act to thwart or disable a threat even when the attacker's identity is unknown. 'Even with the clear understanding that we could experience damage to our infrastructure, we must be prepared to fight through in the worst case scenario,' wrote Alexander in a 32-page Senate questionnaire he answered in preparation for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination to head Cyber Command. Alexander offered a limited but rare description of offensive US cyber activities, saying the US has 'responded to threats, intrusions and even attacks against us in cyberspace,' and has conducted exercises and war games, adding that it is unclear whether or not those actions have deterred criminals, terrorists or nations."
Slippery slope... (Score:5, Funny)
Let them respond to cyber attacks today and tomorrow they'll be asking if they can defend against physical attacks. I don't think we can afford to go down this road.
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Let them respond to cyber attacks today and tomorrow they'll be asking if they can defend against physical attacks. I don't think we can afford to go down this road.
So your answer is apathy? Attacks range from network disruption, altering important information, and espionage of business and government information.
Being apathetic of such a serious issue is completely ridiculous and I don't think many people realize the severity of these attacks. This isn't a geocities page getting shut down here.
Furthermore, what do these attacks symbolize? Are they the actions of a country whose face smiles at us and hands shake with us? Are we to maintain the facade of cooperation
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Yes, its dangerous to protect yourself and your property. But if you don't, you'll get chewed up anyway.
So let me get this right. You are in all seriousness proposing the the Army responds to physical attacks against the country?! Wow, just wow!
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I really dislike apathy in the face of aggression.
Oh, but one Republican Representitive (Michelle Bachmann) evidently thinks an appropriate response to a cyber-attack is to NUKE somebody. Crank up the Dial-A-Yield, make their cities glow, let's make Leetspeak a language only spoken in Hell.
What the hell, apathy doesn't sound so bad, if it just keeps someone like her from starting Armageddon over some 14 year old script kiddee trying to deface Apple's website. In fact, apathy is starting to sound pretty prom
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I disagree with nukes... Response in kind. If the damage is virtual, use virtual. If response in virtual fails, attempt to discern an equivalent physical response and carry it out. Or at least do tactical strikes on the various loci the attackers are trained in.
These are not 14 year old script kiddies... these are organized attacks by governments. Don't downplay what is going on; or likely in your case to talk about something without actually even knowing what is going on.
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-1, Wooooooosh!!!!
Re:Slippery slope... (Score:4, Funny)
Sir! The attacks are coming from 127.0.0.1! Permission to engage?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
Some curious 12 year old tests a port-scanner he found from a forum and thought it was cool to be geeky and like the cool hacker kids. USA detects it as a "cyberattack" and bombs the house he and his sisters and parents live at. Justified?
Some curious 12 year old tests a port-scanner he found from a forum and thought it was cool to be geeky and like the cool hacker kids. USA detects it as a "cyberattack" and bombs the house the proxy he used at is and the family that lives there. Justified?
Some curious 12 y
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You're right. It's such a waste to be doing all that bombing. That's why I advocate putting a crowbar factory into space. No more bombs!
Alright - serious question. Where did you read that the US was going to bomb any place, based on a cyber attack? "returning fire in cyberspace" just doesn't equate to "Nuke 'em Captain!" It doesn't even equate to "Drop a dozen crowbars on this Arizona village".
Re:Slippery slope... (Score:5, Funny)
You know how moderating is; just one +1 insightful and then your traveling down the slippery slope to more.
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I wish I could mod myself down. This was a wisecrack folks and not worthy of any mods.
Damn crazy kids these days...
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I'm all for transferring this authority to a more civilised country, if it means less hate speech and other disgusting material on the internet.
And I thought you were going to suggest that the ICANN should stay in the US after praising their free speech laws (or at least I see it as pointing out how they'd rather allow hate speech than reduce freedom of speech).
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USA is pretty much the only country on earth that lets its citizens yell disgusting hate speech at each other ...
You're just a no-good, f ..... [lost carrier]
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You did read the part where they say 'even when the attacker's identity is unknown', or? They don't know who it is, but they want to drop bombs on them.
No office pranks in that department, eh?
Lou to his cubicle-neighbor Jimmy, "I just ordered a strafing run on that sonovabitch who had me kicked from the TF2 server".
Jimmy: Uh. I'm gonna take off early today.
Tell me again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are essential systems connected to the internet?
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Re:Tell me again... (Score:4, Funny)
Why are essential systems connected to the internet?
Yeah, who let the military on the internet in the first place?!
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You are not the sharpest stick in the wood are you Lord Pillage?
Well he's obviously several orders of magnitude sharper than that dullard AC he was responding to.
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Too bad we don't have enough attacks to coerce an immune response, as we do with viruses and malware.
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To provide a reason to develop harsh cybersecurity laws to fight intellectual property theft and free speech.
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Re:Tell me again... (Score:4, Interesting)
Uhhhh - huh?
This is probably a good place to make wise cracks about the Army and the Air Force, comparing them to the Marine Corps (part of the Department of the Navy, in case you didn't know) but I really would like to know what you're smoking.
Tell you what. Head on over to your closest Navy base, and try to get in. Take a group of friends, if you like. For best results, pick a nuclear capable base. Post back and tell us that the Corps isn't set to defend their bases physically. For that matter, you could choose someplace with nuclear capability and no marines.
The same year that we evacuated Beruit City, we were invited to visit Crotone, Italy. All unbeknown to us, the local communists staged a riot, protesting our nuclear presence in Italy. The plan seemed to be to storm the ship, take the nukes hostage, and embarrass the United States.
As part of the ship's defense force, I went out on the pier with 6 other guys, armed with M-14 rifles, while the gunner's mates set up M-2 machine guns on the bridge wings. The 5 inch guns were brought to bear on the city. We, the landing party, cleared the pier of rioters, then stood nose to nose with the carabinieri (spelling?) for an hour, while a couple local officials came aboard to talk to our captain.
Fortunately, there was no bloodshed, but we would have detonated that nuke in the harbor to prevent a bunch of rioters from getting it. People with nukes are pretty damned determined to make sure that they cannot possibly ever be used against thier own country.
Oh yeah. Compare that to the long list of "mistakes" that the Air Force has been found guilty of.
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Negative.
I'm a swabbie. I was part of the ship's landing force. We, as a squad, went onto the pier to face the rioters, and to buy a few minutes so that the gunner's mates could set up their machine guns, while the rest of the gunner's mates manned the main guns. It takes about three minutes to bring the ship to combat readiness, and it was our job to buy those minutes. And, of course, to intimidate the closest rioters. It worked. It doesn't matter if you have 50, 500, or 5000 fellow rioters behind yo
So what's new? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Nothing at all. They'll trace the source to some building, blow it up, and discover bodies of women and children and men (who will be reported as insurgents or whatever).
Only difference is that the people responsible for the attacks don't even have to be in the same building, city, or continent so it'll just be some family with a compromised computer.
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I say you have bigger problems than dodging potshots if you bungled up your security so fucking bad that any house is a potential sniping point.
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As was stated above, its stupid that so many key systems are connected to the Internet (i.e. why power stations aren't mandated to
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As was stated above, its stupid that so many key systems are connected to the Internet (i.e. why power stations aren't mandated to have a separate network for critical computers to their word processing/Internet browsing computers is beyond me), but that is the way it is.
Because resources aren't infinite. If they had to run their own fiber to all the control systems, it would be vastly more expensive, which means something else important wouldn't get done.
Sure, in a perfect world, they would have a stand
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If you run fiber between populated areas, the cost of that fiber can be split among a few million customers. If you run fiber to a remote power station, dam or pipeline - you can't split the cost since there is only one customer.
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Military flexes muscle, says they will respond with force, what's new?
Don't you know that when you add "cyber" or "on the Internet" to existing ideas, it automatically becomes novel and non-obvious?
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Worked for my patent applications...
Re:So what's new? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, what he said is that he'd respond to attacks in cyberspace by counterattacking in cyberspace. No suggestion at all that we'd respond to cyber attacks with bombs/missiles/guns....
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Maybe he would have preferred you'd said:
Military flexes level 80 hunter muscle, says they will respond with force, what's new?
You know, to make it more cyber.
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Did you read the new national nuclear defense policy that made the news last week?
It was controversial for reducing our posture in some scenarios, which probably distracted most peopel, but through the noise I noticed that it specifically authorized the use of nukes to counter a cyberattack.
When we confirm much of it is coming from China... (Score:5, Insightful)
... will we realize that we should maybe consider possibly not putting nearly all of our business there?
I realize we need china to support American materialism/consumerism. A cultural revolution could change that, though. I would much rather buy less, but of higher quality, as produced by my fellow citizens -- keeping the dollars in our own country and filling the bank accounts of people who otherwise wouldn't have had a job and would want my dollars anyway.
Something to think about... When you buy American, you reinvest in your fellow citizens. I'm not a champion of nationalism, but we are far from world unity and the last thing our country needs is to keep sending our dollars elsewhere.
When the one-world utopia happens, I'm all for it.
Re:When we confirm much of it is coming from China (Score:4, Funny)
Well, yeah, but it's more of a question if it'll hold our attention long enou- ooh, Entertainment Tonight is on!
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That's how it used to be in America, back when our factories were thriving. Americans had the choice, and they chose cheaper, crappier mass-produced goods from China over higher-quality but more expensive goods produced in our own country.
I wouldn't mind this. I would, of course, still buy goods manufactured in countries I consider our allies, such as the UK. Sadly, due to an apathetic and ignorant society, a Congress driven by campaign contributions, and short-sighted corporations, we are now somewhat dependent on China and other unfriendly nations.
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You would choose the more expensive option, but sadly not enough of your fellow citizens would join you to make it profitable enough for the manufacturers. Hence the current situation. Look at airlines for a similar problem.
Don't blame the government for all you problems.
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Don't blame the government for all you problems.
Um, what?
due to an apathetic and ignorant society, a Congress driven by campaign contributions, and short-sighted corporations
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We chose? When?
Twenty years ago WalMart was full of American Made goods. It was even part of their advertising. It was the businessmen in search of the almighty profit dollar that moved the manufacturing overseas who left us NO choice.
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Re:When we confirm much of it is coming from China (Score:1, Funny)
"I would much rather buy less, but of higher quality, as produced by my fellow citizens "
You DO realize the above is an unAmerican mindset, don't you ?
Now get back in line and buy everything, whether you need it or not !!!
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I would much rather buy less, but of higher quality, as produced by my fellow citizens -- keeping the dollars in our own country and filling the bank accounts of people who otherwise wouldn't have had a job and would want my dollars anyway.
Don't worry, you'll be buying less from China, because China feels exactly the same way.
In the long term, China doesn't particularly want to continue being so export heavy.
Their goal is to convert much of that export business into domestic consumption.
But don't think that means Americans will start buying more from the USA.
Production has been and is still moving to South America, mainly Mexico.
Be careful what you wish for.
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Why would I need to 'be careful' what I wish for. What, pray tell, do you fear of the reduction of imported cheap crap from china? Did you not acknowledge the value of keeping the dollars in country?
I have been careful. Materialism and chinese imports in general make me sick and embarrassed of my peers.
You say 'be careful' as if you fear such a change. Are you satisfied with this way of being? If so, I don't have anything else to talk to you about as I've already stated I'm embarrassed by people like t
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You talk as though China can just say "we want our money, give it to us now" which they can't. We could just not pay them, get a bad name worldwide, and collapse the world economy.
Matter of fact, most of the debts TO the US were solved this way... They simply didn't pay. We're still friends with Germany.
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I realize we need china to support American materialism/consumerism.
No, we don't.
The desire of much of the population for ever-cheaper crap to buy at Walmart on their credit cards, and the greed of national corporate distributors keeps that particular piece of bullshit alive. There is no rational reason why we couldn't produce everything we need within our own borders.
SB
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Minimum wage and worker safety laws alone would make many goods exponentially higher were they produced in the US. You'd also have to stop workers from unionizing, because that would also make prices somewhat higher, so quality of life for workers wouldn't be terribly high either.
I'm all for it. I yearn for what you speak of. Those dollars go to my fellow citizens! Those people will have jobs and purpose and will not require tax dollars in social programs now.
We could all use a few less things. Our focus on materials has distracted us from that which has much higher value: human interaction. Try it.
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Social protections are wonderful, and rightly so. The majority was being abused and exploited, but the majority *is* the country, and so they are making the system fairer.
That is all beside the point, which is that it would be beneficial for us as a whole to invest more in ourselves than to shuttle dollars off to China buying cheap goods and increasing corporate profits. Yeah, no major American corporation would want to do that because to afford to pay americans they would have to drop some profit margins
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Tenfold my ass. If you're going to say that I want to see figures.
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Exponentially? I doubt that. The use of that term smacks of corporate propaganda.
Corporate abuse of employees by corporations is a time honored custom here with much tradition behind it ;-\
Make workplaces safer? Perhaps that burden should fall on the manufacturers rather than the consumers. But you are right, in one sense - the rich will always pass the extra costs on to the poor, including and especially the poor bastards who work for them.
So where in the long run does that
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The term "corporate propaganda" includes advertising and the associated markups ;)
I don't know for sure, but I suspect you are too young to remember when the majority of basic goods went from being locally manufactured to imported (1970s to now, pretty much, it "evolved"). You might want to go and look at the balance of trade numbers from those decades, they are rather enlightening.
I have to go do some "local servicework" early tomorrow, so have to crash. I'll try and get back to th
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It costs more to pay americans to do the job, thus the price must go up. Thus the materials are bought in lower quantity.. consumed less.
Think about the wages, overhead, etc, of producing in country. I'm happy with it and would gladly buy 1/3 the crap for the same cost so long as it was made by my fellow citizens and I could personally drive to the company to say "hey, this is broken" if they wont' honor the warranty.
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I wasn't saying I wouldn't pay higher prices for goods, personally. I was saying that the populace's demand for cheaper goods - which is driven by competition amongst companies outsourcing our production AND their advertising - is producing the problem.
There isn't a person in this country who can say that they buy entirely US produced goods nowadays. When I was growing up, that wasn't the case, although it was getting much harder to.
From a personal standpoint it has led to me buying
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It would take protectionist policy to enforce this theoretical balance. What say you now?
Aside from that, and I know we disagree here, I would *gladly* pay more for the same product if it were made by my fellow citizens. As I said before, without them earning it that way, they will take it through social programs (for which I am very happy to support). By keeping the dollars within, we inherently produce more jobs for those without college educations (widespread) and those who got educations but chose pa
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You've totally gone off the point, and you've also completely ignored what all is encompassed in social welfare programs. Personally, I would like to expand ours. But that is all aside the point that spending in our own country provides more jobs and wealth *here*.
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When the one-world utopia happens, I'm all for it.
Know what is the best hope for the "one-world utopia" is? It's economic interdependence.
If I like the widgets you make, and buy them frequently, I'm less likely to hold a grudge against you if you do something stupid, and you probably don't want to bite the had that feeds you, so to speak.
Preemptive strike on Adobe? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm concerned that Reader and Flash will facilitate making my PC part of that attack on the government. And if Joshua taught me anything it was to instead play a nice game of chess. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/ [imdb.com]
We have always been at war with Cyberwar (Score:4, Informative)
The Cylon war is long over.. (Score:2, Funny)
...but *why* are you USAers, as a people, worth saving?
Oh, you mean *cyber* attack. Duh.
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As they say, when you point your finger at someone, you've got 3 other fingers pointing back at you
Actually, in an archetypal "index pointing" gesture, it looks more like my non-index fingers are pointing (through my palm) somewhere off to my right...maybe around 4:00.
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Even if it was widely accepted that your extremities were not part of the constitution of "you", there is still a large argument to be made for what constitutes accurate pointin
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Touché, sir. Point to you.
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Like Adama, many of us American citizens ask ourselves the same question more and more lately... I suspect that Moore and Eick put that speech into the script of BSG for exactly that reason.
SB
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I agree with most of what you said. I don't agree that understanding is futile. The knowledge of how they were being abused is what led to the formation of this country in the first place.
Spinoza wasn't a prophet, he just realized that all this has happened before, and will happen again ;)
In history past, corruption could not doom the whole species. Now, it can. That is the sole difference. I suspect that Spinoza would understand.
SB
Nixon on asymmetric warfare (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps the most wise thing Richard Nixon ever said:
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We could eliminate the entire US military if we just had the balls to nuke anybody who said no.
It's genius right, right, guys?
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And who operates/maintains the facilities & platforms required to deliver the nukes? The Boy Scouts?
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Military means physical, keep em in their boxes (Score:1, Insightful)
The government should do "something" to ensure cyber intrusions are "dealt with" but why does the military have to have anything to do with that?
Give the job to a new separate federal body, preferably with a lot more transparency and accountability than the military
Hm... (Score:3, Funny)
Why is anything sensitive connected to the web? (Score:2, Insightful)
The U.S. Military has extremely expensive equipment. How hard would it be to isolate their infrastructure on something not available on the World Wide Web? They Have SATELLITE NETWORKS! Put the public stuff on the world wide web, and keep the MILITARY INTRANET cord free from the web!
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Since when does "networked"=="internet" and != "any other type of network"?
The phone system is a network. Consider how much vital infrastructure is connected to that.
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You mean like SIPRnet or JWICS?
So its hacker prizes for all? (Score:2)
What if they waste your wintel box, liquidate your Linux or molest your Mac?
Was it like a digital drone or did they send a digital version of main battle tank after you?
Imagine the credibility jump when you log and survive a US counter attack.
The joy of telling digital freedom fighters around the world of how to absorb, stop and roll back US cyber Blitzkrieg.
The rush as the first time you push past the Wintel 'honeypots' of the suppor
Do be careful when our military does this (Score:2)
Trace the IPs as the source of the attacks, get a warrant for the systems doing the attacks and if they are part of a Botnet zombie virus trace the IP logs back until you find the source it originated from that are controlling the Botnets.
You basically want to set up a Honeypot in a DMZ of the systems being targeted and take every other critical system offline and have the Honeypot act as it with dummy data on it. Then when the terrorists or crooks use the dummy data to register some where have the bank rep
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Nice try Lostincali. Go back to Kuro5hin where you belong.
what is needed (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously? (Score:2)
fortress USA (Score:2)
What about us, who is outside the USA? There should be a serious systematic coordinated international police effort to fight cyberattacks.
The USA is one of the main countries of origin of spam http://thegrebs.com/spam/ [thegrebs.com] . What about this? The US army cannot take action inside the country.
It is good that bureaucrats at last began to notice the net. But they should lift from chairs and do some real work on global cyber-security and order. People around the world try to run businesses in the Internet, and hidin
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From TFA:
In cyberspace, he said, it is difficult to deliver an effective response if the attacker's identity is not known.
But commanders have clear rights to self-defense, he said. He added that while "this right has not been specifically established by legal precedent to apply to attacks in cyberspace, it is reasonable to assume that returning fire in cyberspace, as long as it complied with law of war principles ... would be lawful."
Senators noted, in their questions, that police officers don't have to know the identity of a shooter in order to shoot back. In cyberspace, the U.S. may be able to counter a threat, rebuff an electronic probe or disable a malicious network without knowing who is behind the attack.
So you can "take both", as I don't see any general threat to privacy here.