US cybersecurity firm FireEye warns cyber-war imminent, will affect all Americans

A major US cybersecurity company has warned of an imminent cyber-war, saying Americans will be targeted by the next big cyber-attack, whether they know it or not.

FireEye, which provides US government cybersecurity, said that, “The next conflict where the gloves come off in cyber, the American citizen will be dragged into it, whether they want to be or not.

The cybersecurity firm has been at the forefront of investigating attacks in cyberspace against companies throughout the world, but was hacked by foreign state “with top-tier offensive capabilities” late last year.

“People don’t even know all the things they depend on. All of a sudden the supply chain starts getting disrupted because computers don’t work,” FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia said.

He warned that an absence of clear-cut “rules” or justification for when and how to retaliate given the near-impossibility of determining responsibility for even a simple hack would only encourage attackers to continue their work.

US Treasury and commerce department were targeted in a cyber-attack in December, an attack experts said was the biggest cyber-raid against US federal agencies officials in years.

FireEye said in January it discovered the problem after its own hacking tools were stolen, adding that 18,000 customers of the network management company compromised through the implementation of digital backdoors in their networks.

Microsoft also said the hacking campaign that compromises the raft of US government agencies is “the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen.”

US media said the fact the attackers had been able to monitor internal US Treasury Department emails may be just the "tip of the iceberg."

All US federal agencies were told at the time to disconnect from SolarWinds Orion, a computer network tool being exploited by "malicious actors".

SolarWinds said its 300,000 global customers, included all five branches of the US military, the Pentagon, the State Department and the Office of the President of the United States, should upgrade immediately to address the "security vulnerability".

US intelligence agencies claimed that the SolarWinds hack was “likely Russian in origin,” without supplying any proof to back that suggestion.

In 2018, FireEye accused Iran of engaging in activities included “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes.”

The allegations prompted Facebook to target hundreds of accounts allegedly tied to Iran and Russia, and “removed multiple pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram.”

FireEye CEO said Sunday, “There is no actual end to cybersecurity. You have to pursue it every day.”

‘America still unprepared’

A new report released on Monday by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) said with the increased use of artificial intelligence by foreign countries to spread disinformation online and to launch cyber-attacks, the United States will only continue to fall back.

The report said the US is “unprepared” to meet new threats emerging from the tech industry, and that it must implement “significant” changes in order to overcome its current setbacks.

“The United States must act now to field AI systems and invest substantially more resources in AI innovation to protect its security, promote its prosperity, and safeguard the future of democracy,” the commission wrote.

“Today, the US government is not organizing or investing to win the technology competition against a committed competitor, nor is it prepared to defend against AI-enabled threats and rapidly adopt AI applications for national security purposes,” The NSCAI report underlined.

The report noted that China “possesses the might, talent, and ambition to surpass the United States as the world’s leader in AI in the next decade if current trends do not change.”

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