State-sponsored computer attacks grow increasingly ‘reckless,’ NSA official says

Nations are increasingly employing computer attacks without "any sense of restraint," a National Security Agency official said on Friday at a forum in New York.

"We're starting to see nation-state resources and expertise employed in what we would characterize as reckless and disruptive, destructive behaviors," Debora Plunkett, head of NSA's Information Assurance Directorate, told an audience at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, Reuters reported.

Players are carrying out computer espionage-related tasks with an unprecedented amount of latitude, she indicated, saying that the threat of security breaches caused by groups affiliated with China and Russia are “significant.” Even during the Cold War, blocs of nations affiliated with the United States or the Soviet Union worked to undermine each other, but operated with a sense of restraint, she said, according to the article.

Even as the U.S. government calls out other state-sponsored players for their freewheeling ways, it has reportedly, along with Israel, launched malware against nuclear centrifuges in Iran.

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