World
Foreign Powers Steal Data on Critical U.S. Infrastructure, NSA Chief Says
Adm. Michael S. Rogers, head of the NSA. This photo was taken in October 2014. (Michael Holahan/Augusta Chronicle via AP)
(New York Times) – Several foreign countries, including China, have infiltrated the computers of critical industries in the United States to steal information that could be used in the planning of a destructive attack, the director of the National Security Agency said Thursday.
That was one of the cyberthreats outlined at a congressional hearing by Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who also said he expects that criminal gangs may become proxies for nations carrying out attacks on other nations.
“There are multiple nation-states that have the capability and have been on the [industrial] systems,” he said before the House Intelligence Committee.
“We see them attempting to do reconnaissance on our systems” to steal “specific schematics of most of our control systems” down to the engineering details, said Rogers, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s cyberoffensive unit.
