Intel Community Recognizes Cyber Threat

In the 2008 Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Armed Services Committee for the first time the threat of cyber attacks were addressed (well, the first time in the report avail­able to the pub­lic). [EDITOR: The threat assess­ment was deliv­ered by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Defense Intelligence Agency chief, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, in tes­ti­mony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Feb. 27]

The intel­li­gence com­mu­nity listed “the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the US infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture to increas­ing cyber attacks by for­eign gov­ern­ments, non-​​state actors and crim­i­nal ele­ments” as the fourth major bul­let of the fourth page in the open­ing of the forty-​​five page tes­ti­mony deliv­ered to the Senate by DNI McConnell. The tes­ti­mony goes on to state that due to the sig­nif­i­cance of com­put­ers and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions to our country’s secu­rity, defense and econ­omy, threats to our IT infra­struc­ture are an impor­tant focus of the Intelligence Community.

Also stated were the trends seen over the past year, which included cyber exploita­tion activ­i­ties that grew more sophis­ti­cated, more tar­geted and more seri­ous. Finally, McConnell stated that the Intelligence Community expects these trends to con­tinue in the com­ing year. Most con­cern­ing was the fol­low­ing state­ment excerpted from the report.

“We assess that nations, includ­ing Russia and China, have the tech­ni­cal capa­bil­i­ties to tar­get and dis­rupt ele­ments of the US infor­ma­tion infra­struc­ture and for intel­li­gence col­lec­tion. Nation states and crim­i­nals tar­get our gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor infor­ma­tion net­works to gain com­pet­i­tive advan­tage in the com­mer­cial sec­tor.” The report went on to state that ter­ror­ist groups, includ­ing al-​​Qaeda, HAMAS, and Hezbollah have expressed the desire to use cyber means to tar­get the United States.

Criminal ele­ments con­tinue to show grow­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion in tech­ni­cal capa­bil­ity and tar­get­ing, and today oper­ate a per­va­sive, mature online ser­vice econ­omy in illicit cyber capa­bil­i­ties and ser­vices avail­able to any­one will­ing to pay.

The infor­ma­tion con­tained in the tes­ti­mony rep­re­sents the cumu­la­tive views of highly skilled pro­fes­sion­als work­ing on this crit­i­cal issue. All the warn­ing signs are there.

The intel­li­gence com­mu­nity has con­firmed our fears. The “Cyber Arms Race” has begun.

– Kevin Coleman

February 27th, 2008 | Cyber-warfare | 38607 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2008/02/27/intel-community-recognizes-cyber-threat/Intel+Community+Recognizes+Cyber+Threat2008-02-27+20%3A52%3A23Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.