Early in February, the Intelligence Community released its “Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence” for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In it, the IC stated that our nation’s information infrastructure — that includes the internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers in critical industries — are increasingly being targeted for exploitation and potentially for disruption or destruction, by a growing array of state and non-state adversaries.
That should be no surprise to anyone who has read this blog. The report also stated that “Over the past year, cyber exploitation activity has grown more sophisticated, more targeted, and more serious and that the Intelligence Community expects these trends to continue in the coming year.” In addition they discussed the cyber threat assessment they conducted and that Russia and China, have the technical capabilities to target and disrupt elements of the US information infrastructure and for intelligence collection (spying).
They also acknowledged that al-Qaida, HAMAS, and Hezbollah have all expressed their desires to use cyber means to target the United States. If that is not a bleak enough picture they went on to describe criminal elements that continue to show growing sophistication in technical capability and targeting, and today operate a pervasive, mature on-line service economy in illicit cyber attack and exploitation capabilities and services available to anyone willing to pay.
In addition they asserted that “we must take proactive measures to detect and prevent intrusions from whatever source, as they happen, and before they can do significant damage.”
High tech is a critical driver of the U.S. economy. That raises the question: why the stimulus package had so little money directed at cyber defense research and development efforts as well as hardening of our critical information infrastructure? That would have given twice the bang for the buck!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
“High tech is a critical driver of the U.S. economy. That raises the question: why the stimulus package had so little money directed at cyber defense research and development efforts as well as hardening of our critical information infrastructure? That would have given twice the bang for the buck!”
Not to mention putting a good number of people in Silicon Valley, who just lost jobs, back to work.
I’m kinda nervous about how little attention this threat seems to really be getting. We’ll probably have to wait for a digital Dec 7th or Sept. 11th before they do anything.
I am a headhunter specializing in fully-cleared tech search in DC area. I do not solicit secrets but I do hear things. Several disparate sources told me to “Gear Up” for cyber and info assurance type activity back in Nov Dec time frame…It has been ‘hurry up and wait’ ever since. It ‘feels’ like ‘they’ know there will be a pie but there are a lot of people mixing it, baking it, cutting it up, and making sausage to put in it. Last I heard was ‘later in the spring’ but the ‘activity’. I interpret activity as hiring here.
Who’s up for learning new protocols & architecture? Anyone? 8O)
Do We Need a New Internet?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/weekinreview/15markoff.html
” In fact, many computer security researchers view the nearly two decades of efforts to patch the existing network as a Maginot Line approach to defense, a reference to France
The big threats are Russia and China — both official state actors and criminal orgs. I don’t think we have much to worry about from the Islamists in this regard.
There’s some threat Islamists inside the West – American or European Islamists with education and resources – but they can be hunted own by law enforcement, whereas the Chinese and Russian hackers can hide in their home countries.
Definitely a concern, and one we need to plan for over the next few decades as China contests us for hegemony.
Q: “why the stimulus package had so little money directed at cyber defense research and development efforts as well as hardening of our critical information infrastructure?”
A: The U.S. does not have lots of unemployed mathematicians and computer scientists.
This raises a question- why does it HAVE to go into the ‘stimulus bill’, when it is a matter of *national defense* after all, and maybe ought to go into a bill concerning that? For that matter, why not throw it into one of those huge agriculture bills that never seems to get closely debated, much less stalled? Why not add it to the next appropriation on any other matter, if it can’t wait? I’m all for hardening our defenses against cyber-attack; but really, this smells like a straw-man, a play to the Obama-hater crowd, the one that always looks for the slightest excuse to bitch and whine no matter what the issue…
Speaking of cyber-threats: What type of cookies does “Defensetech” use, and what do they do with all the information they gather on us?