The US is weighing whether to prosecute foreign officials for the cyber theft of American commercial and government information in an effort to raise the potential cost of such attacks.
The justice department’s national security division has been studying whether to bring cases against foreign officials since at least 2012 and training prosecutors on how to proceed with such indictments.
Any such decision would mark a substantial escalation in the US response to what it has said is an escalating number of attacks by foreign hackers on US business and government computer networks. The main source of those attacks in recent years has been China and groups that have been linked to the Chinese military.