Testifying before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA Director Leon Panetta said that cyberattacks pose a “real national security threat.”
“I've often said that I think the potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyberattack. If you have a cyberattack that brings down our power grid system, brings down our financial systems, brings down our government systems, you could paralyze this country”, Panetta was quoted by UPI as saying.
He warned that Russia, China, and Iran are developing cyberattack capabilities. “We’re now the subject of literally hundreds of thousands of attacks that come in, in an effort to try to get information”, he added.
"We've got to develop not only defenses against that," he continuted, "but we've got to put our assets in places where we can provide sufficient warning that these attacks are coming."
National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the committee that there are some 60,000 new malicious programs and viruses “identified each day.” The loss of intellectual property to cyberattacks has cost businesses worldwide “approximately $1 trillion,” he was quoted by the Christian Science Monitor as saying.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said that it is difficult to identify where cyberattacks come from. “You don’t know if it’s a state actor, a group of individuals acting at the behest of a state actor, or a group of high school kids across the street”, he told the House panel. These cyberattacks, Mueller said, have the potential of “bringing down pieces of infrastructure if not adequately protected."
In a separate development, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) announced plans to introduce a bill that would increase federal funding for cybersecurity. Menendez said the bill, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, is similar to one that passed the House last year.