By Dan McSwain Dec. 19, 2014
” If we are lucky, the successful terrorist cyberattack against Sony Pictures will shock the U.S. government into more-vigorously defending its people and businesses from hackers.
If we are unlucky, that turning point won’t come until somebody uses cyber weapons to kill Americans, an attack that many experts believe is inevitable.
As a Navy intelligence officer, Tom Chapman hunted adversaries inside networks. Now, as director of the cyber operations group at the San Diego-based security firm EdgeWave, he has a front-row seat as hackers relentlessly assault companies and citizens.
And he is worried.
“I believe that cyberwarfare is like the invention of gunpowder,” Chapman said Thursday. “You don’t need a nuclear warhead anymore to destroy a city. You can just push a button and bring down its power and water systems. Cyber is cheap.”
But even though similar warnings are growing louder, aren’t they a tad over the top? After all, military officers are always looking for enemies. And hacking scares certainly don’t hurt sales of cybersecurity services.
Nope. This problem is serious, a case where misplaced skepticism isn’t healthy.
Let’s talk about money. So far this year, hackers have hit Home Depot, Target, JP Morgan Chase, eBay and dozens of other companies. They stole names, addresses and credit card numbers for more than one-third of the U.S. population.
And that’s just the criminals.
Last year, Taiwan’s security agenda estimated that China’s cyberarmy had 100,000 people hacking the world’s computers.
In October, FBI Director James Comey described China’s comprehensive quest to steal trade secrets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
“There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who’ve been hacked by the Chinese and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked by the Chinese,” Comey told “60 Minutes.”
Russia’s government works with organized crime to develop and test technology that can rob banks, destroy industrial systems or attack military networks.
And Wednesday, Sony canceled the Christmas Day debut and subsequent showings of “The Interview,” a fictional comedy about tabloid journalists who plot to kill North Korea’s dictator. Hackers allegedly working for the isolated nation had threatened violence against theaters.
If terrorism is the threat of violence to achieve political ends, then Japan-based Sony’s capitulation makes this a terrorist act on U.S. cyber “soil.”
As an attack on a company, it ranks with the 1982 Tylenol cyanide poisoning that killed seven people in the Chicago area.
Question: When foreign nations attack companies and citizens inside the U.S., isn’t that a national security problem?”
Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, buttons on the right side of the page.
Subscribe to our Newsletter at the bottom of the page!
#firearms #firearmstraining #guns #handguns #rifles #shotguns #shooting #shootingsports #ammo #gunsmith #2a #selfdefense #competitiveshooting #competitionshooting #molonlabe #guncrafttraining
