After latest WH breach, more needed to defend against cyber attack
WASHINGTON - There has been another security breach at the White House but this time the intruders didn't go over the fence, they hacked their way in.
There have been more than a few fence jumpers at the White House lately. But as security threats go, they don't amount to much.
The more pressing threat: cyber attacks on White House computers. Those happen every day. Officials acknowledge that over the last few weeks, one penetrated the non-classified White House computer system. The attack's origin is unknown but a U.S. official said Russia or its proxies are the prime suspects.
Admiral Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, says the public and private sectors need to do more to combat growing cybercrime.
"We can either deal with this now, in a collaborative, professional way, or we can wait until we get hit with the 2 x 4 right across the forehead."
The cyber attack continues and a White House memo to staffers said "the temporary outages and loss of connectivity that users have been experiencing is solely the result of measures we have taken to defend our networks."
The classified White House computer system, which was not compromised, does not connect to the Internet. The unclassified system does and could yield sensitive, revealing or embarrassing data.
"We are not moving as fast as the adversary to stop or stem this problem and they're taking advantage of that every single day," said former FBI deputy director Tim Murphy.
An unnamed U.S. ally alerted the White House to a specific hacking tactic or signature and that helped reveal this intrusion. The hunt continues for the source of this cyber attack and President Obama is requesting detailed nearly daily briefings on that investigation.
