Edward Snowden Quotes

This is an ongoing threat from a variety of sources around the world. And actually I think it works both ways. I'm not privy to it, but I think all of the various country that have the ability are invading each other's computers all the time. But we have to protect our data. It's very important.

In terms of my conversations with [Vladimir] Putin, these are conversations that took place before the election. As I indicated, there has been very clear proof that they have engaged in cyber attacks. This isn't new. It's not unique to Russia. There are a number of states where we've seen low-level cyber attacks and industrial espionage and, you know, other behavior that we think should be out of bounds.

There's no doubt now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of organizations in America, and I am deeply concerned about this.

All of our intelligence agencies, our Department of Defense, are all working to meet this threat. But it's a fast moving world; it's a place where offense is easier than defense, and keeping up with the next innovation in cyber-warfare is an enormous challenge.

My view is that the cyber threat is bigger than any one government agency - or even the government itself. But the FBI brings a rare combination of scope and scale, experience, and tools to the mix. We investigate criminal activity like intrusions and cyber attacks, but we also investigate national security threats like foreign influence.

If I were to share with you the number of attacks that come into the Duke network every day, you would be astounded. And it's not from people working out of their garage; it's from nation-states that are trying to penetrate systems.

The big unknown is, at what point is a cyberattack so significant that it warrants a physical-world response.

Organizations, whether they are nonprofits or enterprise, need to be aware that nation-states are coming after them for political espionage, economic espionage, or destructive attacks.

Bad actors like Russia, Iran, and China have demonstrated time and time again they have both the capabilities and the intent to use the cyber domain as an operating space to wreak havoc.

Fancy Bear actually went after opposition research and, specifically, research related to the Trump candidacy.

Attackers are able to amortize the cost of exploit, malware, and infrastructure development across many targets.

What you really want is for a cyberattack to be very costly and risky so it is used only rarely and only against really high-value targets.

In cyberspace, it is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold security for one's own country by sacrificing that of others.

I am a physical retailer by trade - if your shop is burgled you don't immediately think, 'Is it North Korea? Is it the Mafia?' But with cyber you don't know initially whether you're dealing with a state actor, as they call them, a small-time criminal, an insider.

Cyber terrorists are no different from other terrorists: No matter where they hide, we will track them down and seek to bring them to the United States to face justice.

Out of any country on the planet, I can't think of a country that has been more focused than Iran from the high levels of government on cyber, and that includes the United States.

The potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack.

We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries.

The two most capable nation state adversaries in the cyber domain are clearly Russia and, of course, China. And I do think Russia poses a huge threat in the way they have used the cyber domain. That, to me, by the way, is the big issue here, is Russian interference in our political process, in our election process. And that is an egregious act by them. And they will continue to do that and I think more aggressively than they have in the past. And I think it's something Americans, all American citizens need to be aware of.

I think that all of the cyber attacks that are taking place, but particularly this - the Russian one, had a profound impact on the American system, on our political process, on our - it invaded the space of our election. The releasing on a regular basis of one party's stolen emails had an impact, and I think that other things also had an impact.

We're well aware, and we have been for a long time, that there is a real threat from adversaries, state actors, non-state actors, to hack us, influence us, destroy stuff through cyber means. Because cyber threat has been understood for a while, it's longstanding, it's a concern.

We've always had to worry about the electrical grid and nuclear facilities, and they remain a concern; but cyber-terrorism, you know, which is a word that you hear more and more, I think is a reality.

When people are talking about cyber weapons, digital weapons, what they really mean is a malicious program that's used for a military purpose. A cyber weapon could be something as simple as an old virus from 1995 that just happens to still be effective if you use it for that purpose.

I would like to repeat: I know absolutely nothing about [hacker's attacks], and Russia has never done anything like this at the State level.

If the United States is promoting the development of exploits, of vulnerabilities, of insecurity in this critical infrastructure, and we're not fixing it when we find it, instead we put it on the shelf so we can use it the next time we want to launch an attack against some foreign country. We're leaving ourselves at risk.