By Wesley K. Clark , Peter L. Levin
Feb 01, 2021
The SolarWinds hack gave digital intruders unprecedented access to the networks of government agencies and most of the Fortune 500 an extremely serious compromise of our nation’s electronic infrastructure. Our intelligence community is still scrambling to understand what has been lost; many believe it is the most serious cybersecurity breach in history.
Because we are increasingly dependent on technology services especially in the pandemic year our adversaries have a large attack surface to probe and exploit. Their primary incentive today is probably voyeuristic surveillance: to see who is connected to whom, what they say, how they say it and when they communicate with each other. But we must assume deeper, more malevolent intentions now that intruders have knowledge of our networks. If there were ever a kinetic conflict, with physical incursion and real violence, the infiltration (and possibly already-implanted malware) cou