What's to stop Russia pulling the plug?

Question

If Russia has root access to the most important US Government computers, and has potentially installed many backdoors or trojans. What is to stop those trojans from wiping the disks?

blindm · Accepted Answer

> What is to stop those trojans from wiping the disks?Because they want to do something creative and clever with those breached systems, instead of of just recursively deleting everything, which would be the best thing to do IMHO.

ignoranceprior · Answer

Threat of retaliation (in various possible ways, not just hacking them back)Edit: Would a cyberattack trigger Article 5 of NATO? Not sure.

AnimalMuppet · Answer

Nothing.One hopes that the government is competent enough to have backups of the important data...

What's to stop Russia pulling the plug?

If Russia has root access to the most important US Government computers, and has potentially installed many backdoors or trojans. What is to stop those trojans from wiping the disks?

> What is to stop those trojans from wiping the disks?
Because they want to do something creative and clever with those breached systems, instead of of just recursively deleting everything, which would be the best thing to do IMHO.

Threat of retaliation (in various possible ways, not just hacking them back)
Edit: Would a cyberattack trigger Article 5 of NATO? Not sure.

Nothing.
One hopes that the government is competent enough to have backups of the important data...