Washington: Officials from the National Security Agency and the State Department said they’re still struggling to come up with a way to deter a powerful hacking group allegedly backed by the Chinese government and accused of slipping into US critical infrastructure networks.
When asked how the US plans to deter the group dubbed Volt Typhoon from future attacks, David Frederick, assistant deputy director for China at NSA replied, “I don’t have a good answer to that.”
“They are trying to position themselves to have an asymmetric advantage in a crisis or conflict. If you look at the cost-benefit from their point of view and just the breadth of targets in the United States and our allies in terms of global networks, they’re not going to be motivated to stop,” Frederick said at an Intelligence and National Security Summit this week. “So that’s a hard problem — how do we get them, sort of thing.”
“It’s a tough subject,” he later added.
When Liesyl Franz, deputy assistant secretary for international cyberspace security at the State Department’s bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, was asked the same question, she responded similarly.
“I don’t know the answer to that question either, but there are many key parts we’re trying to get at,” she said August 28. Franz said the State Department has “increased the drum beat” of deterrence tactics, like public attribution — part of a government-wide name-and-shame strategy.
