Chinese and Iranian Cyberthreat Growing

Gen. Michael Hayden, USAF (Ret.), former director of the CIA, indicated an astounding extent of Chinese cyber espionage and said he believes the Iranians are attacking U.S. banks with unsophisticated but pervasive cyber attacks.

Regarding the Chinese, Gen. Hayden said he believes the government solution to cyber espionage should be economic rather than cyber. “We have cyber espionage coming at us, and they’re bleeding us white. The reason the Chinese are doing this is economic. I think the government response should be economic. We can punish China in the economic sphere,” Gen. Hayden told the audience at the AFCEA Homeland Security Conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

He added that some believe we cannot punish China economically because the Chinese own too much U.S. debt. Gen. Hayden indicated he disagrees.

The general also said the U.S. engages in cyber thievery as well, but he indicated that it is more for security reasons than economic reasons. “We steal other people’s stuff, too. And we’re better at it. We’re number one. But we self-limit—we and a small number of other countries around the world, all of whom speak English,” Gen. Hayden said.

Regarding the Iranians, Gen. Hayden said the number of attacks on the U.S. banking industry has ballooned. “My sense is that we’ve seen a real surge in Iranian cyber attacks. The Iranians have committed distributed denial of service attacks against American banks. I’ve talked to folks in the game here, and they’ve reported to me there’s nothing sophisticated about the attacks, but they say they’ve never seen them on this scale,” Gen. Hayden revealed.

He also described Russia, China and several developing nations as trying to destroy the worldwide Internet as we know it. Those countries argue on the global stage for greater control over the Internet, while Americans argue over security and privacy—a gap that Gen. Hayden said is not as great as some perceive it to be.