The Pentagon would consider a military response in the case of a cyber attack against the US, a defence official said on Wednesday. Asked about the possibility of using military force after a cyber assault, James Miller, under secretary of defence for policy, said: "Yes, we need to think about the potential for responses that are not limited to the cyber domain."
But he said it remained unclear what constituted an act of war in cyberspace.

"Those are legal questions that we are attempting to address," Miller said at a conference in Washington, adding that "there are certainly a lot of grey areas in this field".

He said hostile acts in cyberspace covered a wide range, from digital espionage to introducing false data into a network, that did not necessarily represent full-blown war.

But he said the threat to US networks from terrorists, criminals and others was real and growing.

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