Cyber Attribution Becoming Increasingly Easy As Online Anonymity Fades -Microsoft Official

The development of information technologies makes it more and more difficult for people to remain anonymous in cyberspace, making it easier to identify perpetrators of cyberattacks, Brad Smith, Microsoft's president and chief legal officer (CLO), told Sputnik on Tuesday.

PARIS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2018) The development of information technologies makes it more and more difficult for people to remain anonymous in cyberspace, making it easier to identify perpetrators of cyberattacks, Brad Smith, microsoft's president and chief legal officer (CLO), told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"I think with every passing year it is becoming progressively easier to identify the source of attacks. Five years ago people felt it was easier to launch attacks and be anonymous. But as cybersecurity continues to improve, as information sharing continues to advance, it is becoming much more difficult for people to be anonymous," Smith indicated.

He stated that tools that had been initially created to facilitate human life now turned to be weapons in the hands of hackers and called for the development of common rules that would regulate the cyberspace.

"I think technology has really changed in a way that tools have become weapons and unfortunately this is something one sees in the history of almost all technologies. When that happens it really calls on some people to step back and really think about what rules they want for today, for the future. That is the point in time we are today. We need to look to the future and think about what kind of rules we want to have govern the use of these weapons," Smith stated.

Over the past years the world has faced a series of high-profile cybersecurity incidents as a result of which information of public interest has been compromised. Meanwhile, cyber attribution has proven to be politically motivated with groundless allegations being brought against one or other party without actual evidence.