SANS Institute's Rob Lee Discusses The OPM.GOV Hack on CNN

Key Takeaways

joining me to talk about cybersecurity is digital forensics investigator for the SANS Institute broadly he consults with companies and the United States government so Rob since you do consulting with the US government are you as shocked as say I am sharing this remarkable hack of the OPM the Office of Personnel Management the HR department for the government I actually no I'm not shocked at all in fact these kind of attacks are quite frequent and happen all the time in fact the biggest issue is detecting the attacks and most of the government including the Fortune 500 in this country have an incredibly hard time detecting them and that makes them easy targets for nation-state attackers such as China to take advantage specifically of that lack of capability in cyber security is there is there a scenario here where the toothpaste is out of the tube and thus there is gonna be even a bigger problem down the road and I only ask that because I get these really annoying phishing emails all the time and I recognize them like that or so I think I do but effectively there's something called spear phishing where a hacker gets ahold of you and then your identity and then uses you to have people who you know who would trust you that's exactly right one of the core difficult problems in cybersecurity is the fact that attackers such as China and other nation states are taking advantage of ordinary individuals inside the workplace they send them common emails with attachments or web links in them trying to get them to open them now these are not the emails that you we've all been customed to that are originating from Nigeria or from Africa these actually look like legitimate emails that your own organization might have sent out it might be a new policy one of the ones that we've seen over the years that almost has a 100 percent a success rate is sending emails related to w-2 tax forms right next to tax time in early April oh man you know I've been so tempted but I get them the old snail mail way but that is really scary it's a to think that somebody would have to think twice about a w-2 just quickly can I ask you about that there is this very strange list that puts the United States at the very top of victimization by global hacking Thailand is number two but way way below the US why is it that we are so valuable to hackers around the world and who's doing more of it is it the outsiders or is it within our own borders that's doing the most hacking to us well definitely the lead culprit in fear last question first is China there are other nation states such as Russia and Iran and more that are also doing it but China is pretty much the lead aggressor in leading the charge on these hacks now why us well specifically we have more intellectual property as a country that other countries such as China are trying to obtain in order to provide an economic advantage as a part of their normal day-to-day business China views any information including that which is stored by our government or even our top commercial industry such as Microsoft Google or Apple as ripe pickings and because it's so easy to accomplish and there's zero threat of arrest and zero threat of any actual deterrent that's going on nothing is telling China or other countries hey this is wrong you should not do it and as a result there's no pushback that will eliminate this in the near future expect this to become a common news cycle from this point forward well then expect us to be calling you a lot more and open up the calendar to be on the show more because you're extraordinary with your information base I really appreciate it Rob thanks for doing this thank you very much Rob Lee joining us Wow digital forensics you had to know that was going to be a good vocation three