On Dec. 15th, 2011, Shihan Fang reported for CNBC on Michael Hayden's (Ex CIA/NSA head) comments at the Black Hat security conference. A few of his comments caught my eye.
Gen. Hayden, in commenting how impressed he was with the sophistication of Chinese espionage, mentioned that the US also spies using cyber. However, Gen. Hayden noted that "We steal secrets, you bet. But we steal secrets that are essential for American security and safety. We don't steal secrets for American commerce, for American profit. There are many other countries in the world that do not so self limit."
The article again quoted Gen. Hayden: "Theft of intellectual property is not a long term good bet for Chinese economic growth. In fact if you steal enough intellectual property, there won't be enough left to steal because people will stop investing in intellectual development. So over the long term I think you'll probably perceive that ours and China's interests are far more coincident than we might view them to be today."
The CNBC article can be found here.
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The National also reported on a few of Gen. Hayden's comments. Specifically, these comments were about Stuxnet.
According to the article, Gen. Hayden thought that Stuxnet was a "incredibly precise attack" that could have been used by a "responsible nation."
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Just a bit of editorializing here, but between the conclusions that the US and Israel were behind Stuxnet, to the conclusions that the US might be behind Duqu, to Gen. Hayden's "responsible nation" comment, to the theory that Stuxnet, Duqu, and Conficker were all working together, is there really any substantial doubts that the United States had some hand in Stuxnet?
Strangely, the most damning evidence, for me, was the report that Stuxnet was triggered on April Fools day and the day Ahmadinejad visited Columbia University in NYC. Besides the US and/or Israel, what other nation could combine that level of humor, with that level of sarcasm, with that level of cyber expertise?
Tell me who you think was behind Stuxnet in the comments. If you end up being right, the winner gets a free Crossroads t-shirt (we don't have t-shirts).
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