Assistant attorney-general John Carlin remembers when FBI cyber intelligence specialists sat in a locked room at the US attorney’s office in Washington, cut off from criminal prosecutors in the same building. Now those walls have broken down as law enforcement officials rethink how they work with intelligence to fight the mounting risk from cyber attacks that threaten national security.
The shift helps explain why authorities named North Korea as the culprit behind the Sony Pictures cyber attack less than a month after the Hollywood studio was hacked. The approach also represents a more aggressive strategy of naming and shaming cyber attackers.
“The world is watching so you need to send a message to regimes about what they can expect our response to be so you’re not operating in a cost-free environment where you think it will never be attributed to you,” said Mr Carlin, head of the national security division in the Department of Justice. “We’re not afraid to say it and after we say it, there will be a proportionate response.”