US urges shared cyberattack defence

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US urges shared cyberattack defence

By James Blitz in London and Joseph Menn in San Francisco

Published: January 26 2010 20:01 | Last updated: January 26 2010 20:01

URL: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7a9a0c ... html?nclick_check=1

The US and its Nato allies have been urged to collaborate more intensely to fend off the threat of cyberattacks in the aftermath of the alleged Chinese assault on Google.

The Pentagon’s top cyber-strategist said shared warning systems had to be established and government contacts broadened.

In an interview with the Financial Times, William J. Lynn, US deputy defence secretary, said America and the UK had been working to counter the growing international danger of cyberattacks.

But he warned that the US, UK and other states had to deepen cross-border collaboration if they were to deal with a form of warfare that ignored national boundaries.

“You can’t just protect the system by defending yourself from inside your own country,” Mr Lynn said on a visit to London. “International co-operation is imperative for establishing the chain of events in an intrusion and quickly and decisively fighting back.”

Mr Lynn said the US defence department was subjected to thousands of cyber attacks each day, as hackers sought to break into systems run by the Pentagon.

“The kind of defence we want is not something akin to the Maginot Line, but more like manoeuvre warfare. You can’t just sit behind firewalls. You need an active defence that is seeking out and countering threats on the internet,” he said.

He said companies also had to recognise how intellectual property was being stolen. Defence companies were more likely to lose secret technical information as a result of cyber-crime than the lax application of export control rules.

“We need to make sure we are defending the intellectual property that is an important foundation of our economies,” he said. “You won’t see a catastrophic attack on intellectual property. But over time, the loss of that intellectual property might be far more damaging to the country than other forms of attack.”

Nato set up a joint defence operation to focus on cyber-threats after massive attacks on Estonian government websites in 2007 were traced to computers within Russia.

That type of assault has been repeated against sites in Georgia and others out of favour with the Kremlin, while Chinese hackers have been accused of stealing as much data from US military employees and contractors, in just one operation, as is contained in the Library of Congress.

Mr Lynn’s warning is the latest in an almost daily stream of rhetoric between Washington and Beijing on the threat posed by hackers and the extent of China’s actions to contain those based within its borders.

Even within the borders of a single country, the problem is enormously complicated. US President Barack Obama in May called cyber defense a key national priority and pledged to appoint a policy co-ordinator, but it took until December for him to do so.

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