May 29, 2009 5:17 pm US/Pacific
President Obama Poised To Pick New Cyber Czar
Silicon Valley Could be Tapped for Expertise
SAN JOSE (CBS 5) ―
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President Barack Obama.
Jim Watson/Getty Images
President Barack Obama said Friday that our nation is at risk of cyber attack.
"It's no secret my presidental campaign harnessed the internet and technology to transform politics. What isn't known is during the election hackers managed to penetrate our computer system," said Obama.
Cyber attacks have gone beyond crashing a website or stealing personal information. A recent attack on the FBI knocked out the agency's email system for two days. The Pentagon was hit with a worm and hackers even stole information about a $300-billion Joint Strike Fighter.
The Defense Department spent $100-million so far this year fixing the damage done by the cyber criminals. US companies spend on average a half a million per hacker attack. The new Cyber Security Czar's job is to protect all of these US interests.
Jay Chaudhry, is a security expert and CEO of Zscaler, a company that provides internet security on a growing cloud computing infrastructure. He said the position is long overdue. He hopes the President appoints someone from the technology industry and not a politician.
Chaudhry said the new Cyber Czar should focus on what's called "botnet attacks" where hackers plant code in our computers while we're connected to the internet. They can then instruct the computers to launch attacks on other systems or retrieve sensitive information.
Unlike the old days, today hackers are not doing it for bragging rights. He said, "There's lots of money involved. When there is lots of money involved not just for individuals but for state governments to steal secrets about fighter jets why wouldn't they do it? I think we are underestimating how vulnerable we are. On a scale of 1-10 we are sitting at about 8."
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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