Executive Order 13694 was issued on April 1, 2015 and authorized the imposition of sanctions on individuals and entities determined to be responsible for or complicit in malicious cyber-enabled activities that result in enumerated harms that are reasonably likely to result in, or have materially contributed to, a significant threat to the national security, foreign policy, or economic health or financial stability of the United States. The authority has been amended to also allow for the imposition of sanctions on individuals and entities determined to be responsible for tampering, altering, or causing the misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions in E.O. 13757.
Executive Order 13757 issued on December 28, 2016, amends EO 13694. E.O. 13757 focuses on specific harms caused by significant malicious cyber-enabled activities, and directs the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, to impose sanctions on those persons he determines to be responsible for or complicit in activities leading to such harms. The U.S. Department of State and other U.S. government agencies work to identify individuals and entities whose conduct meets the criteria set forth in E.O. 13694, as amended, and designate them for sanction under the delegated authority of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Persons designated under this authority are added to OFACS’s list of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN List).