Cyber agency warns war in Asia would hit America in cyberspace

America’s top domestic cyber agency is warning that a war breaking out in Asia would spread to the U.S. in cyberspace and have serious consequences in the real world.

Cyberattacks against infrastructure used by Americans every day is “not a theoretical threat,” according to Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“This is a world where a war in Asia could see very real impacts to the lives of Americans across our nation with attacks against pipelines, against water facilities, against transportation nodes, against communications; all to induce societal panic and to deter our ability to marshal military might and citizen will,” she said at a Cipher Brief event last week.

Ms. Easterly said the federal government is worried about China’s Typhoon hacking groups, suspected of burrowing into networks for future sabotage and penetrating telecommunications companies for espionage.

She said CISA is emphasizing resilience because it knows it cannot eliminate the cyberattack threat.

She told The Cipher Brief she wants her anticipated successor atop the agency for the incoming Trump administration to pay close attention to the risks facing businesses.

“We think what we’ve seen to date is really just the tip of the iceberg and that’s why we’ve been so focused on talking about the importance of resilience,” Ms. Easterly said. “We cannot architect systems for complete prevention, we need to architect them for an ability to adapt, to be able to deal with disruption, to respond, to recover, and to really prepare for that.”

While Ms. Easterly fears the threat of a worse attack, she said her agency has gotten much better at detecting the foreign hackers, outpacing others working to identify threats.

“We have actually successfully detected the Salt Typhoon campaign in ways that we’ve not seen some of the major entities be able to detect it and that’s why we have such talent to be able to work with the private sector to understand these campaigns, to identify them and to help mitigate the risk,” she said.