After ISIL claimed a cyberattack on U.S. Central Command's Twitter and YouTube accounts, President Obama pushed Congress for stronger cybersecurity laws. His proposals include requiring companies to share threat data with the government and outlawing botnet sales. Security expert Robert Siciliano says public-private partnerships will improve corporate defenses, though privacy concerns linger from past NSA revelations.
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Paul.
Mike Vaccaro at the White House. CENTCOM's social media platforms are back online tonight. A cyberattack disabled U.S. Central Command's Twitter and YouTube sites yesterday. The hackers who claimed responsibility for those attacks said they were supporters of ISIL. Meanwhile, President Obama called on Congress today to pass legislation giving authorities more power to track down hackers. Jamie McIntyre has those details.
Paul, there's not much President Obama and Republicans who control Congress can agree on these days, but they did seem to find some common ground on improving the nation's cyber defenses.
The hacking of Sony Pictures followed by the self-proclaimed cyber jihad conducted against the U.S. Central Command's Twitter and YouTube pages has created a rare consensus among Democrats and Republicans that new laws are needed to counter cyber attacks. At a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, the president cited cybersecurity as one area that should unite the divided government.
It just goes to show how much more work we need to do, both public and private sector, to strengthen our cybersecurity, to make sure that families' bank accounts are safe, to make sure that our public infrastructure is safe.
The White House has revamped some old ideas that stalled in the last Congress. The proposals would, among other things, encourage private companies who are hacked to share more data with the government, but only after scrubbing it to remove to remove private information. Target botnets, automated computer programs used in denial-of-service attacks. The sale of botnets would be outlawed and courts would be given new authority to shut them down. And toughen laws against the overseas sale of stolen credit card and bank account numbers, as well as spyware used to stalk or commit ID theft. The president fleshed out his proposals in a speech at the National Cybersecurity Communications Integration Center just outside Washington.
The bottom line, we want cyber criminals to feel the full force of American justice because they are doing as much damage, if not more these days, as folks who are involved in more conventional crime.
Initial reaction from Republican lawmakers was positive.
That's an area I think we can work together on, cybersecurity. I know we'll have our ideas as well, but I think it's something very serious that we all need to work together on.
One of the tricky issues is how much the new laws would intrude on Americans' privacy. Private lives. Earlier attempts to improve cybersecurity have raised concerns from civil libertarians who fear it would amount to too much government snooping. The president's plan, though, provides protection for private companies from lawsuits, but only if they adopt new privacy restrictions.
Paul, Jamie McIntyre in Washington. We're joined now by Robert Siciliano. He works as a security expert in Boston for the internet security and privacy company Hotspot Shield. Robert, thanks for being with us.
Good evening.
So, quick question here. This proposal about sharing more information between really the public and private sector, between government and industry, is this because in general we just don't know enough about cyber attacks?
Well, that certainly is the case. The more transparent that government officials are with the information that they have in regards to worldwide cybercrime organizations, organized web mobs, the better corporations will be able to protect themselves. The government, CIA, Secret Service, FBI, many of them are on the front lines, you know, along with many of the corporate penetration testers. They have a lot of insight, and the more collaboration there is, the better off we will be.
Gotcha. So the upside for industry is that they're going to gain from the expertise of the government and vice versa, I presume. But let me ask you this, of course, there's going to be privacy concerns here. I mean, we have endless discussions in this country about the NSA, about invasion of cell phone data, of tracking of America. I mean, isn't this going to raise those same kind of concerns?
You know, they're— look, the data's out there. You know, our information, your information, my information has been compromised half a dozen times already. And so it's floating around. It's the— what they can do with that data that can cause harm is the big issue. And so having a public-private partnership is one way to make that data useless to the thief.
How much are government and industry working together already? I mean, I think that's what most of us would have assumed. That, uh, they're working together to make sure this doesn't happen.
We know a lot of the, um, large corporations that provide, uh, security software and hardware and so forth have government as their— some of their biggest clients. So there already is a significant amount of collaboration. It's on the investigation side, uh, it's on the law enforcement side that, uh, that collaboration needs to increase. And also with foreign nations and other law enforcement throughout the world. You know, with cybercrime, the financial systems go down, you know, we're all in this together, you know, globally. So you see a lot of foreign nations are also cooperating with the US government as well.
And back to that last question about, about surveillance and privacy concerns, are other countries concerned about working with the US on this based on some of the revelations about the NSA, about about surveillance?
Yeah, that cat certainly is out of the bag, and I would imagine that, um, you know, everybody pretty much knows at this point what's going on. So, you know, spying has been going on since the beginning of time, and so while it comes to a— it's a little unnerving for the average citizen, it's not something that should be, um, you know, completely surprising. You know, it's Echelon and all the other, uh, behind-the-scenes technologies— and efforts that have been going on since the Cold War. You know, spying is just simply a part of life.
And it's all going on behind the scenes, as you point out. Robert Siciliano, thank you for joining us.
