Many of the successful cyberattacks on the United States aren’t very sophisticated at all, America’s top intelligence official told a House panel on Thursday.
“Chinese hackers are often able to gain access to their targets without having to resort to using advanced capabilities,” said James Clapper, director of national intelligence. “Improved U.S. cybersecurity would complicate Chinese cyber espionage activities by addressing the less sophisticated threats.”
Clapper made the comment during his opening statement before the House Intelligence Committee. He pointed to attacks on the Office of Personnel Management and Community Health Systems, an operator of acute care hospitals based in Tennessee. Both attacks were linked to Chinese groups. More than 22 million OPM records were breached, while Community Health Systems lost more than 4 million.
Experts have suggested that both attacks were likely enabled by phishing. It refers to a technique in which hackers send an email that victims open, and then either click on a link or open an attachment, thereby giving hackers access to their system. When one individual in a given network opens such an email, they provide the hackers with the resources they need to access other users, and ultimately get into government databases.
“I don’t recall a time that we’ve been beset by a greater variety of crises and challenges around the world,” Clapper said.
Adm. Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, added that attacks have not been as severe as they could have been. One of his greatest concerns was the possibility that the U.S. should see a shift from “outright theft” to “manipulating data,” such that officials “question the validity of what we’re looking at.”
The OPM breach resulted in the exfiltration of classified personnel files. Officials have said that if it had gone unnoticed, it could have enabled the hackers to change the files to portray false information about individuals working in the intelligence community.
