Cyber threat growing at unprecedented rate, intell chief says

By Ben Bain
FCW.com
Feb 02, 2010

Malicious cyber activity is growing at an unprecedented rate, severely threatening the nation's public and private information infrastructure, the government's top intelligence official said today.

Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, that "in the dynamic of cyberspace, the technology balance right now favors malicious actors rather than legal actors, and is likely to continue that way for quite some time."

Sensitive information is stolen daily from government and private-sector networks and intelligence officials often find persistent, unauthorized, and sometimes unattributable presences on exploited networks, Blair said in prepared remarks about intelligence agencies' annual threat assessment.

"We cannot be certain that our cyberspace infrastructure will remain available and reliable during a time of crisis," he testified.