Last month the U.S. Office of Personnel Management was hit by a drastic cyberattack which resulted in personal information of millions of current and former U.S. government employees to be stolen. While the Obama administration has refrained from pointing fingers it’s believed that the attack originated from China, a new report claims that the administration is mulling a possible retaliation against the People’s Republic.
The New York Times reports that President Obama has decided to retaliate against China though there’s no clarity on what the nature of this response is going to be, the reports cites an unnamed senior administration official saying that the government wants to make a public response to mitigate the possibility of such attacks in the future.
It’s said in the report that the administration is considering its options, whether it should go with a symbolic response in the form of a formal diplomatic protest or be more aggressive.
No matter what the response turns out to be the Times says that the government has decided to respond in one way or the other particularly due to the “scope and ambition” of the OPM attack.
One possible response mentioned in the report entails breaking through the infamous “Great Firewall” of China and hurt its ability to control what the citizens of that country can and can not access on the internet.
There has been no official comment on the matter from the White House.
Filed in . Read more about China, Cyberattacks and Hacking.