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Reportedly, the initiative was designed to be temporary and only lasted for half a year — Trump signed the order in March, and it ended on September 30th. It wasn’t destructive, either. According to the Post‘s sources, however, North Korean hackers were complaining about the ability to do their jobs during that period.
North Korea certainly isn’t going to get much sympathy. With that said, it raises questions about the use of cyberattacks as a pressure tactic. It no doubt sends the message that the US can cripple a hostile country’s digital warfare capabilities if it wants, but there is the concern that it could escalate an already tense situation. After all, North Korea is the sort of country that claims you can declare war with a tweet — while that’s hyperbolic, it might interpret a denial of service attack as an act of aggression that merits revenge.
