Mikko Hypponen Quotes

China and Russia are regarded as the most formidable cyber threats.

The destructive malware attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) in late 2014 was an unprecedented cyber event for the United States in its scope, destructiveness, and economic implications. The FBI responded to this attack with an investigation that was groundbreaking in its scope and collaboration.

The truth is, consumer-grade antivirus products can't protect against targeted malware created by well-resourced nation-states with bulging budgets. They can protect you against run-of-the-mill malware: banking trojans, keystroke loggers and e-mail worms. But targeted attacks like these go to great lengths to avoid antivirus products on purpose.

States will also have trouble acting anonymously in cyberspace, as private companies are increasingly willing and able to identify the sources of cyberattacks. The cybersecurity firm Mandiant made headlines in 2013 when it exposed a covert Chinese military cyberunit responsible for stealing massive amounts of data from U.S. government and corporate networks. In February 2015, the Russian security software firm Kaspersky Lab claimed to have identified spyware from an unnamed Western government on computers in 30 countries. And in January 2016, the cyber-intelligence firm iSIGHT Partners determined that a Russian group was probably behind a successful attack on the Ukrainian power grid.

It's no surprise that hackers working for North Korea, Iran's mullahs, Vladimir V. Putin in Russia, and the People's Liberation Army of China have all learned that the great advantage of cyberweapons is that they are the opposite of a nuke: hard to detect, easy to deny, and increasingly finely targeted.

What we've seen over the last decade is we've seen a departure from the traditional work of the National Security Agency. They've become sort of the national hacking agency, the national surveillance agency. And they've lost sight of the fact that everything they do is supposed to make us more secure as a nation and a society.

The government of China has admitted that they've been involved in cyber infiltrations around the world and in governments.

While cyber espionage is having a tremendous negative affect on the global economy from the theft-caused drain of intellectual property and the resulting adverse incentives for continued investments in innovative growth, the threat from destructive and disruptive attacks is amplifying the risks even further.

We are at war, if you will, in the cyber domain now, constantly battling countries, such as Russia or China, who are trying to do everything from steal our technology to influence our elections to put out disinformation about the United States.

Since most cyberwar is conducted covertly, governments avoid any public acknowledgment of their own abilities and shy away from engaging in any sort of 'cyber diplomacy.' Statecraft conducted in secret fails to create public norms for deterrence.

In a modern digitalized world, it is possible to paralyze a country without attacking its defense forces: The country can be ruined by simply bringing its SCADA systems to a halt. To impoverish a country, one can erase its banking records. The most sophisticated military technology can be rendered irrelevant. In cyberspace, no country is an island.

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.

I worked for GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters, and is the equivalent of the NSA here in the U.S.

Besides the conventional military threats, North Korean cyber capabilities are growing.

While the specifics of Russia's interference in the 2016 American election remain unclear, no one doubts that Moscow has built a robust technological arsenal for waging cyberattacks.

It is interesting that cyberwarfare is developing into something conventional and attacking objects, infrastructure, and critical services.

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.

With Fancy Bear, we have medium-level confidence it's GRU, which is Russia's military intelligence agency, and with Cozy Bear, we have low-level confidence it's FSB, the Russian federal security service.

I don't think we have wrapped our heads around how much technology has allowed the manipulation of individuals and democracies.

Some of the greatest national security threats we face cannot be defeated or defended by traditional military hardware, but only by greatly enhanced cyberspace warfare, including both offensive cyber-warfare and cyber-security.

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.

As individuals and as a nation we have become dependent on a vast digital infrastructure. That, in turn, has made us vulnerable to cybercriminals and foreign adversaries that target that infrastructure.

Cyberspace is the new domain of warfare.

The intensity of cyber conflict around the world is increasing, and the tools are becoming cheaper and more readily available.