On May 25, 2017, Representative Tom Graves released the second draft of proposed amendments to 18 U.S.C. 1030 (known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). Representative Graves’ bill is known as the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act (or ACDC Act). There is no universally accepted umbrella term for this, but it is variously called “Active Defense”, “Active Cyber Defense”, “hacking back,” “hackback”, and “strike back.” You will find the word “active” applied almost universally in these discussions, though it frequently results in establishing a simple (though false) dichotomy of “passive defense” vs.