Who's got your hack back?

The topic of hacking back keeps coming up these days. There's an attempt to pass a bill in the US that would legalize hacking back. There are many opinions on this topic, I'm generally not one to take a hard stand against what someone else thinks. In this case though, if you think hacking back is a good idea, you're wrong. Painfully wrong.

Everything I've seen up to this point tells me the people who think hacking back is a good idea are either mistaken about the issue or they're misleading others on purpose. Hacking back isn't self defense, it's not about being attacked, it's not about protection. It's a terrible idea that has no place in a modern society. Hacking back is some sort of stone age retribution tribal law. It has no place in our world.

Rather than break the various argument apart. Let's think about two examples that exist in the real world.

Firstly, why don't we give the people doing mall security guns? There is one really good reasons I can think of here. The insurance company that holds the policy on the mall would never allow the security to carry guns. If you let security carry guns, they will use them someday. They'll probably use them in an inappropriate manner, the mall will be sued, and they will almost certainly lose. That doesn't mean the mall has to pay a massive settlement, it means the insurance company has to pay a massive settlement. They don't want to do that. Even if some crazy law claims it's not illegal to hack back, no sane insurance company will allow it. I'm not talking about cyber insurance, I'm just talking about general policies here.

The second example revolves around shoplifting. If someone is caught stealing from a store, does someone go to their house and take some of their stuff in retribution? They don't of course. Why not? Because we're not cave people anymore. That's why. Retribution style justice has no place in a modern civilization. This is how a feud starts, nobody has ever won a feud, at best it's a draw when they all kill each other.

So this has me really thinking. Why would anyone want to hack back? There aren't many reasons that don't revolve around revenge. The way most attacks work you can't reliably know who is doing what with any sort of confidence. Hacking back isn't going to make anything better. It would make things a lot worse. Nobody wants to be stuck in the middle of a senseless feud. Well, nobody sane.