Cyber attacks pose the greatest threat to the United States
after nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction -- and they
are increasingly hard to prevent, FBI experts said Tuesday.
Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI's cyber division,
told a conference in New York that computer attacks pose the
biggest risk "from a national security perspective, other
than a weapon of mass destruction or a bomb in one of our
major cities."
"Other than a nuclear device or some other type of destructive
weapon, the threat to our infrastructure, the threat to our
intelligence, the threat to our computer network is the most
critical threat we face," he added.
US experts warn of "cybergeddon," in which an advanced
economy -- where almost everything of importance is linked
to or controlled by computers -- falls prey to hackers, with
catastrophic results.
Michael Balboni, deputy secretary for public safety in New
York state, described "a huge threat out there"
against everything from banking institutions to municipal
water systems and dams.
(Article continues below)
Henry said terrorist groups aim for an online 9/11, "inflicting
the same kind of damage on our country, on all our countries,
on all our networks, as they did in 2001 by flying planes
into buildings."
A web attack of that scale has not yet happened in the United
States but computer hacking -- once something of a sport for
brilliant delinquents -- is rapidly evolving around the world
as a weapon of war.
