General Alexander: Pentagon Faces Massive Cyber Threat

Army Gen. Keith Alexander, commander of the new U.S. Cyber Command, says the Pentagon's vast computer system is probed by potential enemies a quarter-of-a-million times every hour and needs to be protected, especially in a time of war. Alexander testified Thursday before a U.S. Congressional panel.

The U.S. Department of Defense has about 15,000 different computer networks, including 7 million computing devices on hundreds of military installations around the world.

Alexander told members of the House Armed Services Committee that those computer systems are at risk.

"We face severe threats,” he said. “Those threats to our national security in my opinion are real. It is occupying much of our time and attention. At the unclassified level, we have stated that we see probes and scans to our networks that come up on the order of 250,000 times an hour.”

The Defense Department recently revealed new details about a major cyber attack in 2008 that allowed hackers to transfer data to servers under foreign control. Defense officials say that intrusion served as a wakeup call. Cyber Command was created the following year to defend the Pentagon's computer networks.

Alexander, who directs the National Security Agency said that, since the inception of the Internet, the key problems have been hacker activity and exploitation of private and sensitive information.

"That is where someone comes in and takes information from your computer, steals your credit card number, takes money out of your account,” Alexander said. “We have seen that go on and that endures, and it is perhaps the most significant form of the threat that we see today — not just stealing our intellectual property, but also our secrets and other parts of our networks.”

Alexander warned that deterring enemies in the cyber world will not be easy and could take years to achieve. He said the government needs to work with private industry to ensure that the nation's critical infrastructure is protected.
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