The sophisticated hacks pulled off by Russia and China against a broad array of government and industrial targets in the United States \u2014 and the failure of the intelligence agencies to detect them \u2014 are driving the Biden administration and Congress to rethink how the nation should protect itself from growing cyberthreats.<\/p>\n
Both hacks exploited the same gaping vulnerability in the existing system: They were launched from inside the United States \u2014 on servers run by Amazon, GoDaddy and smaller domestic providers \u2014 putting them out of reach of the early warning system run by the National Security Agency.<\/p>\n
The agency, like the C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies, is prohibited by law from conducting surveillance inside the United States, to protect the privacy of American citizens.<\/p>\n
But the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security \u2014 the two agencies that can legally operate inside the United States \u2014 were also blind to what happened, raising additional concerns about the nation\u2019s capacity to defend itself from both rival governments and nonstate attackers like criminal and terrorist groups.<\/p>\n
The sophisticated hacks pulled off by Russia and China against a broad array of government and industrial targets in the United States \u2014 and the failure of the intelligence agencies to detect them \u2014 are driving the Biden administration and Congress to rethink how the nation should protect itself from growing cyberthreats.<\/p>\n
Both hacks exploited the same gaping vulnerability in the existing system: They were launched from inside the United States \u2014 on servers run by Amazon, GoDaddy and smaller domestic providers \u2014 putting them out of reach of the early warning system run by the National Security Agency.<\/p>\n
The agency, like the C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies, is prohibited by law from conducting surveillance inside the United States, to protect the privacy of American citizens.<\/p>\n
But the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security \u2014 the two agencies that can legally operate inside the United States \u2014 were also blind to what happened, raising additional concerns about the nation\u2019s capacity to defend itself from both rival governments and nonstate attackers like criminal and terrorist groups.<\/p>\n
Source: New York Times<\/p>\n