14 DAY TRIAL // The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, said that the success of Chinese hackers isn’t owed to their skills but to the frequency of their attacks.
In an interview on 60 Minutes, among the topics touched was that of hackers and the nations initiating attacks against the US.
China is the top cyber-adversary for the United States
The director would not disclose a top five of the states attacking the US online, but placed China at the top of the list, saying that its hackers would steal anything that could take the stress of inventing new technology off their shoulders.
“There are two kinds of big companies in the United States: there those that have been hacked by the Chinese and those who don’t know they’ve been hacked by the Chinese,” Comey said during the interview.
However, this is not because they are adept cyber intruders but because they are so prolific in their attacks; “their strategy seems to be ‘we’ll just be everywhere, all the time’, and there’s no way they can stop us,” he added, likening them to a “drunk burglar” carrying out a loud intrusion and leaving all sorts of clues behind.
Referring to the assets coveted by the Chinese intruders, Comey said that they would take “information that is useful to them so that they don’t have to invent,” and anything “they can copy or steal.”
The financial loss generated by these incidents cannot be quantified, but billions of dollars are being spent to deal with them.
FBI is still behind hackers when it comes to countering cybercriminal activity
Although great progress has been made in the past years, Comey admits that the FBI still has some steps to take in order to become better at fighting cyber threats.
He compared the good guys and the bad guys with soccer teams playing in different leagues. “We’re about highschool soccer now; we’ve spread out, we pass well, but the bad guys are moving at World Cup speed, so we have to get better.”
Reducing the amount of crime online is not a business just for authorities, as users can also protect against cyber-attacks by paying more attention to emails carrying attachments coming from unknown persons.
Although China is named top cyber-attacker, recent news shows that Russia may also be involved in events targeting important corporations in America.
However, if the incident at JP Morgan Chase proves to have been orchestrated by Russian hackers, it means that they are not amateurs in breaking into the systems, as the malware on the bank’s computers is said to have been around for two months prior to discovery.