Admiral Dennis Blair painted a pretty grim picture before the Senate Intelligence Committee today. The director of national intelligence said that there's been a large spike in the risk of cyberattacks.
"Sensitive information is stolen daily from both government and private sector networks, undermining confidence in our information systems, and in the very information these systems were intended to convey," Dennis C. Blair said in his prepared remarks to a Senate committee.
"Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication," he said.
Blair's full prepared remarks are available here. He says that neither the government nor the private sector working by themselves can stop a possible cyber-9/11, but they can if they work together. Proof positive--the recent attack on Google.
If Blair's prepared statement is to be believed, there's a cottage industry of sophisticated malware out there. For instance, some malware has the ability to rewrite itself, making it hard to detect. Cybercriminals are also targeting smartphones as well.
In a big change from last year, Blair came to the hearing with Leon Panetta and Robert Mueller. Methinks it's a direct response to the failed Christmas Day bombing, which was caused by failing to connect the dots.