WASHINGTON—Despite the danger posed by Islamic State and other extremist groups, the nation’s top intelligence official warned on Thursday that sophisticated cyberattacks like the recent hack of Sony Pictures posed a greater threat to the US.
The threat comes not just from foreign spies and hackers trying to steal trade secrets, but from government-backed intrusions that siphon vast wealth and valuable data from US computer systems.
“Although we must be prepared for a catastrophic large-scale strike, a so-called cyber Armageddon, the reality is that we’ve been living with a constant and expanding barrage of cyberattacks for some time,” James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing on worldwide threats.
Clapper said Russia was playing a growing role, warning that the threat from hackers working for the Russian government “is more severe than we have previously assessed,” though he declined to provide details in public.
The governments of China, North Korea and Iran also have infiltrated US digital networks, he said.
For the first time last year, foreign governments launched cyberattacks designed to obliterate US computer data, Clapper said.
In February hackers erased hard drives and froze servers running slot machines and loyalty rewards programs at Las Vegas Sands Corp. casinos in Las Vegas. Clapper confirmed on Thursday that Iran was behind the hacking operation.
Security experts theorize that Sands was targeted because the casino company’s owner, conservative billionaire Sheldon Adelson, had said in 2013 that a “mushroom cloud” could rise over Tehran if it continued its nuclear-development program.
Clapper described North Korea’s digital assault on Sony Pictures as “the most serious and costly cyberattack against US interests to date.”
Last November hackers infiltrated the company’s servers to wipe clean computers and release sensitive data, including Social Security numbers, embarrassing e-mails and the salaries of top executives.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said the North Korean government wanted to prevent the studio from releasing The Interview, a film that mocked leader Kim Jong Un. Sony has spent at least $15 million to repair the damage.
Under pressure to improve the government response, President Barack Obama ordered the creation of an agency to analyze threat data collected by the National Security Agency, the Pentagon, the Homeland Security Department, the FBI and other government entities, as well as private industry. The new Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, as it is called, will report to Clapper.
In response to questions, Clapper acknowledged that the US also had built “offensive capabilities” to sabotage adversaries’ computer networks. But he said officials were still trying to develop doctrine for when, and how aggressively, the government should launch digital counterattacks.
“That is an issue that, at the policy level, we’re still, frankly, wrestling with,” Clapper said.
TNS