Edward Snowden Quotes

If we take as given that critical infrastructures are vulnerable to a cyber terrorist attack, then the question becomes whether there are actors with the capability and motivation to carry out such an operation.

To me, the most terrifying form of warfare would be if there was some simultaneous cyber attack on our grid, on the banking system, and on our transportation system. That would be quite a devastating thing, and yet in theory, absent some real protective measures, that could happen.

When we talk about computer network exploitation, computer network attack, we're not just talking about your home PC. We're talking about your cell phone, and we're also talking about internet routers themselves. The NSA is attacking the critical infrastructure of the internet to try to take ownership of it. They hack the routers that connect nations to the internet itself.

There are two kinds of big companies in the United States. There are those who've been hacked by the Chinese, and those who don't know they've been hacked by the Chinese.

The biggest thing that concerns me is when we start getting countries using cybercrime to shut down infrastructure, electricity, communications systems, the Internet, et cetera.

I am well aware of the facts presented by numerous security experts on the many ways in which the United States' digital networks have come under siege by cybercriminals and under daily assault by hackers in league with various foreign governments.

The Internet is brittle and fragile and too easy to take down. It's a conduit for criminal activity. We need international treaties to prosecute the bad guys, but we don't have them.

Protecting yourself is very challenging in the hostile environment of the Internet. Imagine a global environment where an unscrupulous person from the other side of the planet can probe your computer for weaknesses and exploit them to gain access to your most sensitive secrets.

Look at what is happening in China and in Russia. They have units that are specifically targeted cyber warfare. They are carrying it out. Our critical infrastructure is attacked thousands of times a day.

As economic life relies more and more on the Internet, the potential for small bands of hackers to launch devastating attacks on the world economy is growing.

The DNC hack shows the rapid increase in sophistication of nation states (and Russia in particular) in using the Internet to project powers. We're seeing skilled malicious actors pushing the boundaries of what they can accomplish.

In our rush to connect everything [via the Internet], we have created a monster of bad guys just waiting to take advantage of a weak line of code in a very complex program.

The Internet definitely could be a weapon of mass destruction - it's not going to come in a bomb, it's going to come as a cyberattack. It's pretty amazing to see what a small group of people can do if they really know how to control the universe.

A major attack on our cyber systems could shut down our critical infrastructure - financial systems, communications systems, electric grids, power plants, water treatment centers, transportation systems and refineries - that allows us to run our economy and protect the safety of Americans.

Organized crime and rogue nation states and terrorists are very much focused on the Internet of things. The challenge that goes with connectivity is always security. The bad guys go wherever the return is, and now it's more lucrative for bad guys to focus on cybercrime than traditional crime.

The Internet - central to modern life - provides new ways for our enemies to plan and act against us.

While cyber espionage is having a tremendous negative affect on the global economy from the theft-caused drain of intellectual property and the resulting adverse incentives for continued investments in innovative growth, the threat from destructive and disruptive attacks is amplifying the risks even further.

When people conceptualize a cyber-attack, they do tend to think about parts of the critical infrastructure like power plants, water supplies, and similar sort of heavy infrastructure, critical infrastructure areas. And they could be hit, as long as they're network connected, as long as they have some kind of systems that interact with them that could be manipulated from internet connection.

Bob Mueller for the FBI, myself, met with a particular group of executives that have major roles in the so-called ISPs, the Internet service providers, what they could possibly do. We have met with leaders in private industry in terms of the core critical infrastructure of the country as to what they can possibly do with cyber-attacks.

It's always been government's role to protect the security of the nation. And cyber-attacks is a security issue, from our perspective. And it's a security issue of particular concern with respect to the nation's core critical infrastructure, the infrastructure everyone relies on, the energy sector, the telecommunications sector, the banking sector.

The internet is shared critical infrastructure for everyone on earth. It's not supposed to be a domain of warfare. We're not supposed to be putting the Unied States' economy on the frontlines in the battleground.

In a little while, I'd like to address one of the most important aspects of America's national security, and that's cyber security. To truly make America safe, we must make cyber security a major priority, which I don't believe we're doing right now, for both government and the private sector.

Every time we walk on to the field of battle and the field of battle is the internet, it doesn't matter if we shoot our opponents a hundred times and hit every time. As long as they've hit us once, we've lost, because the U.S. is so much more reliant on those systems.

A lot of countries have advanced capabilities. And given the vulnerabilities of our infrastructure and our economies to digital platforms, we have to be careful in making sure that this doesn't become a lawless, low-level battlefield.

Modern cyberspace is a deadly festering swamp, teeming with dangerous programs such as 'viruses,' 'worms,' 'Trojan horses' and 'licensed Microsoft software' that can take over your computer and render it useless.