U.S. Intelligence Report Alerts On Severe Cyber Risks To Infrastructure

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, the top U.S. intelligence official warned that U.S. critical infrastructure is "severely threatened" and called the recent cyber attack on Google "a wake-up call to those who have not taken this problem seriously." "Sensitive information is stolen daily from both government and private sector networks, undermining confidence in our information systems, and in the very information these systems were intended to convey," said Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, in prepared remarks outlining the U.S. intelligence community's annual assessment of threats.

While Blair's testimony covered terrorism, nuclear proliferation, geo-political conflicts, global economic problems, risks associated with climate change, and global health challenges, it addressed cyber threats first.

"Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication," he said, citing as an example the emergence in 2009 of malware that modifies itself to avoid detection.

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