A report from the House Intelligence Committee recommends that Congress update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to cover malicious international cyber actors.
A heavily redacted report has been released by the Committee as part of an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. It notes that Congress tried to address cyber issues as part of its statutory reauthorization of FISA.
“Given the difficulty in attributing a specific cyber actor, the lines between independent hacker and government cyber operator are often blurred,” says the report. “U.S. adversaries are consistently attempting to obfuscate their identity and location in order to evade detection. Unfortunately, current national security authorities are inadequate to counter the growing cyber threat.”
It also states that adding malicious cyber actors to the definition of “foreign power” would allow the intelligence committee to target cyber groups without having to connect them to terrorist organizations or foreign governments.
The report states that this would help keep the United States ahead of its adversaries.
See the full redacted report here