'Cyber mass shooter' is new danger of IoT age

Gus Hunt is warning a disgruntled script kiddie could take down the World Wide Web. "That is a terrifying prospect ... That is what we are facing with the internet of things."

The massive cyberattacks on internet infrastructure this fall powered by networks of infected devices were probably orchestrated by “script kiddie” amateur hackers, a former senior CIA official warned Wednesday, heralding a “terrifying” new era in which disgruntled individuals could bring down the internet.

“Think about it,” former CIA Chief Technology Officer Ira “Gus” Hunt said. “It wasn’t a nation-state, it wasn’t organized crime … it was one individual who was ticked off with a gaming company,” according to media reports in the wake of the Oct. 21 distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack. The attack, powered by millions of infected devices, temporarily crippled internet infrastructure provider Dyn and knocked major websites offline for several hours.

“That is a terrifying prospect,” Hunt said, “That is what we are facing with the Internet of Things.” Hunt, who now runs Accenture Federal Services’ cybersecurity practice spoke at a Washington, D.C., event organized by FedInsider.

He echoed a recent warning from NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett that the exponential growth of networked consumer devices was creating a pool of vulnerable computing power that could be turned against any target that hackers desire.

“We don’t have any conception and haven’t thought through what that means,” he said.

“It’s going to go from bad to worse,” he explained to CyberScoop after his speech. “We’re going to have to ride this out for a bit … [But] eventually capabilities will emerge that … shift the paradigm.”

In 2013, another former senior intelligence official, retired NSA and CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, warned about the possibility of a “digital mass shooter” — an outraged or deranged amateur hacker able to obtain cyberweapons currently available only to nation-states and organized crime. Such a super-empowered individual could attack critical infrastructure, Hayden warned.

In October, malicious software created by an Arizona teenager spread on iPhones and caused telephone denial of service attacks against 911 centers across the country.

“People have been warning about this possibility for some time,” Hunt told CyberScoop. “But now it’s actually happening.”

Government

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Technology

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

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• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

• The Collective Cyber Defense letter wrote your next vendor questionnaire

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure