John Brennan Quotes

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.

The most pervasive cyber threat to the U.S. financial sector is from cyber criminals.

'Social engineering,' the fancy term for tricking you into giving away your digital secrets, is at least as great a threat as spooky technology.

The alarm bells sound regularly: cybergeddon; the next Pearl Harbor; one of the greatest existential threats facing the United States. With increasing frequency, these are the grave terms officials invoke about the menace of cybercrime - and they're not understating the threat.

From a security perspective, if you're connected, you're screwed.

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.

The very promise of safety [digital security] is iresistable temptation to hackers, the invading hordes of the 21st century.

Nobody should be too boastful or too proud about their security because there are people who have a major interest in cracking the security of networks, the security of companies.

We now see hacking taking place by foreign governments and by private individuals all around the world.

Today, we face another major potential attack on our country. This attack is not a hijacked plane or bomb, although that remains a threat; rather, it is a cyber attack.

Social engineering has become about 75% of an average hacker's toolkit, and for the most successful hackers, it reaches 90% or more.

Cyberespionage and cyberattack is exploding from our adversaries inside our country. We don't seem capable of stopping it.

Cyberterrorism has become an increasingly prevalent and serious threat here in America, both to individuals and businesses.

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.

As the United States attorney in Manhattan, I have come to worry about few things as much as the gathering cyber threat.

We face cyber threats from state-sponsored hackers, hackers for hire, global cyber syndicates, and terrorists. They seek our state secrets, our trade secrets, our technology, and our ideas - things of incredible value to all of us. They seek to strike our critical infrastructure and to harm our economy.

Penetrating a company's security often starts with the bad guy obtaining some piece of information that seems so innocent, so everyday and unimportant, that most people in the organization don't see any reason why the item should be protected and restricted.

Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the Internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.

We want to detect malware, regardless of its source or purpose. Politics don't even enter the discussion, nor should they. Any malware, even targeted, can get out of hand and cause 'collateral damage' to machines that aren't the intended victim.

Because there are little to no consequences for conducting cyberattacks, criminals and nation-states are becoming bolder in their threats and behavior. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are increasingly hacking into U.S. companies and government networks for espionage purposes or financial gain.

Every ISP is being attacked, maliciously both from in the United States and outside of the United States, by those who want to invade people's privacy. But more importantly they want to take control of computers, they want to hack them, they want to steal information.

When an attacker fails with one person, they often go to another person. The key is to report the attack to other departments. Workers should know to act like they are going along with what the hacker wants and take copious notes so the company will know what the hacker is trying to find.

Every portal coming into this country is being attacked by those who would harvest information, both national security secrets and just the common information of private individuals and private individuals. That crime is going on, every day, on a single entity known as the Internet.

Most of the computer compromises that we hear about use a technique called spear phishing, which allows an attacker access to a key person's workstation. It's extremely difficult to defend against.

Look at what is happening in China and in Russia. They have units that are specifically targeted cyber warfare. They are carrying it out. Our critical infrastructure is attacked thousands of times a day.