Obama aims to avoid a ‘cycle of escalation’ in cyberattacks by countries
US authorities are also said to be investigating the hack of another Democratic Party organisation, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The FBI has also reportedly warned election officials across the country to take measures to secure their computer systems, after foreign attackers were found to have hacked two state election databases in Illinois and Arizona.
“I am not going to comment on specific investigations that are still live and active, but I’ll tell you that we had problems with cyber intrusions from Russia in the past, from other countries in the past,” Obama told reporters, according to news outlets.
The president described moving into a new era where a number of countries have significant cyber capacities, and “frankly we have got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively,” he said in an apparent warning to the Russians.
He said the goal of the US was not to duplicate in cyberspace a “cycle of escalation” akin to other arms races in the past, but to start “instituting some norms” so that everybody is acting responsibly.
Obama said there are going to be enough problems in cyberspace with “non-state actors” using the Internet for theft and other illegal purposes, which creates the need for protecting critical infrastructure and securing financial systems.
“What we cannot do is have a situation in which, certainly, this becomes the wild, wild West, where countries that have significant cyber capacity start engaging in unhealthy competition or conflict through these means,” Obama said. He said he had discussed the topic of cybersecurity norms with Putin and earlier with some other countries, and is already seeing some willingness from a lot of countries to adopt the rules, though it will have to be seen whether they are following them.
IDG News Service
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