Network Probes Getting More Sophisticated

The Defense Department’s networks are probed by unauthorized users roughly 10 million times a day, said Gen. William Shelton, head of Air Force Space Command. Speaking Thursday at AFA’s CyberFutures Conference in National Harbor, Md., Shelton said some of those hits are random while others are increasingly sophisticated and targeted. The latter are the most likely to result in the exfiltration of data from the networks or some type of sleeper activity, he said. As soon as one figures out how to build a defense against a specific type of attack, the adversary changes the game, said Shelton. “It’s a play-counterplay sort of thing,” he said. “You try to stay ahead and anticipate. We are very good at operating in cyberspace, but so our adversaries,” he added.