After saying that the Islamic State still aspires to develop significant offensive cyber attack capabilities, the deputy commander of U.S. Cyber Command said that there’s a bigger concern. The ability of Islamic State hackers to gain illegal access to sensitive information, like names and addresses of U.S. personnel, is a threat that makes targeting easier.
But what really keeps Cyber Command up at night comes from a more capable adversary. Lt. General James MacLaughlin says:
“[T]he types of threats that we worry most about today… are adversaries taking full control of our networks, losing control of our networks, having a hacker appear to be a trusted user.” (WSJ)
Adversaries with these kinds of capabilities are a very small circle that includes Russia and China. And the potential effects of these types of attacks are devastating.
