Hayden: Cyberspace is ‘Lawless’
Cyberspace has become a lawless environment without any natural technical barriers to protect information, requiring every user to assume a personal responsibility for firewalls, said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and of the CIA.
In an interview with PBS, Hayden spoke about the cyber threat and his reluctance to use the word “war” to describe the assaults in cyberspace.
“Because it is so anarchic, there are a variety of actors out there in this space that don’t have your best interests at heart,” he said. “There are state actors out there who are interested in stealing either state secrets or industrial secrets.”
The retired four-star general touched upon the topic of potential enemies, such as spies, terrorists and other criminals. The modern-day bank robber is not the one who robs banks with drawn weapons, but one who goes online to steal valuable things, he explained.
As for labeling warfare on the Internet, Hayden said there is a tendency to “too facilely throw the label attack, cyber attack, on a whole bunch of things from the American side.”
Hayden also cited the findings of a recent survey that concluded that the United States in the most feared nation in the cyber domain.
“The Chinese were a close second, but we were No. 1, which I think is simply a reflection that we are a technologically agile country, and we have very good intelligence services, and the rest of the world is kind of responding to that reality,” he said.
Hayden called previous nation-state cyber attacks–as seen in Estonia and Syria–fairly unsophisticated. Although destructive, these denial-of-service attacks do not require a higher degree of finesse, he pointed out.
Answering a question on about whether there is a defense against a cyber attack, Hayden noted that the advantage goes to the offense. Internet is built on openness, access and agility–factors that do not help the defense, he said. However, the strategy is to make U.S. targets less attractive than other targets, and make it more expensive for an adversary to attack.
“Can we make it so good that no one can attack us? Probably not. But we can reduce the chances of damage,” Hayden said.
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