National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers has cautioned that some nation-states have the ability to launch a concerted cyber attack and steal U.S. intellectual property, National Defense Magazine reported Monday.
Yasmin Tadjdeh writes that Rogers, who also heads U.S. Cyber Command, believes that countries such as China and Russia can target the financial sector and critical infrastructure as part of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” attack.
“You look at what happened at Sony, you look at what we’ve seen nation states attempting to do against U.S. financial websites for some years now,” said Rogers, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2015.
He told attendees of a recent New America Foundation cybersecurity forum that the Defense Department is also concerned about breaches at defense contractors, Tadjdeh reports.
Rogers said attackers target information on defense technologies that support U.S. operational advantage.
According to the report, the NSA director also eyes a renewal of the agency’s authority to collect metadata when it expires in June.
