WIRED
As the Biden administration moves on an ever-growing list of policy initiatives, the White House issued sanctions this week for a slate of Russian misdeeds, including interference in the 2020 election, the poisoning of dissident Aleksey Navalny, and the SolarWinds hacking spree that swept United States government agencies and many private-sector companies. The retaliatory move is complicated when it comes to SolarWinds, though, because it comprised the sort of espionage operation that would typically fall within geopolitical norms.
Elsewhere in the US government, the Justice Department took a drastic step this week to halt a Chinese hacking spree by authorizing the FBI to obtain a warrant and then directly delete attackers’ hacking infrastructure from hundreds of victims’ internal systems. Many in the security community lauded the effort, but the move also stoked some controversy given the precedent it could set for future US government actions that might be more invasive.