U.S. Cyber Command Head: China’s Aggression Is 2nd Weakest Cyber Link

During an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, National Security Agency Director and U.S. Cyber Command Director Gen. Timothy Haugh said that the second biggest cyber weak link is the fact that “we’re really seeing China be very aggressive to use their industry to find those vulnerabilities, keep them private, and target them.”

Bloomberg Correspondent and host Haslinda Amin asked, “You talk about how the U.S. is helping to build resilience. Where is the weakest link? Where needs help?”

Haugh answered, “So, one of the ways that we think about this is when nations ask for assistance, and so, within U.S. Cyber Command, we do a series of operations that are called Defend Forward, where, when they ask us, we will send a team of experts to them. And we do a number of things together, shoulder-to-shoulder. One of them is whatever network they identify that they’re concerned about, we’ll work together to identify, are there vulnerabilities and are there attempts at hacking that infrastructure that we can then close? And at different times, we’ll also expose that activity, because it really does help others learn from that. So, I think first and foremost, the number one threat [is] vulnerabilities that are latent in networks and the ability for people to close their own vulnerabilities is one. The second is, we’re really seeing China be very aggressive to use their industry to find those vulnerabilities, keep them private, and target them. So, that’s why we are rapidly working with any number of nations to expose, wherever we can, what vulnerabilities exist in systems and also Chinese actions to take advantage of them.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett