Congress Slammed with Cyber Attacks

The number of cyber attacks against Congress and governmental agencies has grown into the billions in the last year. In the start of 2008, attacks including worms, Trojan horses and spybots only numbered 8 million per month. That number now stands at 1.8 billion attacks per month, according to Senate Sergeant at Arms, Terrance Gainer.  Due to the increase in threats, Gainer asked Chairman Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to allocate $1 million for information technology consulting and equipment.

“We operate in an escalating attack environment in which threats to our information infrastructure are increasing in both frequency and sophistication,” Gainer wrote in testimony submitted to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee last night. “Our raw numbers bear this out, so we must remain on guard.”  Attacks are coming from both domestic and foreign sources.  Attacks are centered around infiltrating employees computers who work on the Hill. They have been targeting programs such as Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

Many of the attacks are stopped by pre-installed defenses to the entire system, but increasingly the attacks are passing through the system. Malicious content, on average, is downloaded four times per month on Senate computers.  “I don’t think there will ever be an end in sight. The amount of people trying to get at us is increasing,”  said Gainer.

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