U.S. intel chief warns of devastating cyber threat to U.S. infrastructure

The U.S. intelligence chief warned on Friday that the threat was growing for a devastating cyber assault on critical U.S. infrastructure, saying the "warning lights are blinking red again" nearly two decades after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are launching daily cyber strikes on the computer networks of federal, state and local government agencies, U.S. corporations, and academic institutions, said Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.

Of the four, "Russia has been the most aggressive foreign actor, no question," he said.

Coats spoke at the Hudson Institute think tank shortly after the Department of Justice announced the indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers on charges of hacking into the computers of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party organizations.

The indictment and Coats' comments came three days before U.S. President Donald Trump was to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks in Helsinki, Trump's first formal summit with Putin.

The summit will begin with one-on-one talks between the two leaders in which Trump has said he will raise the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia used cyber attacks and other means to meddle in the 2016 election, a charge Moscow denies.

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