Cybersecurity

Former FBI spy hunter: Don’t trust China on ‘no hack’ pact

A former FBI investigator who helped expose Soviet double agent Robert Hanssen1 warns that enterprises should give up worrying about hackers, “who are now the good guys”, and be more worried about spies.

Veteran spy hunter turned infosec exec Eric O'Neill said that espionage has evolved and become increasingly digital as hackers have become key in exposing security bugs through bug bounties and the like. The evolution of the threat landscape has happened without corporate security mindsets catching up, he says.

Too many enterprises continue to think that they aren’t important enough to become a target for cyber-espionage from so-called APT groups but this mindset is wrong and needs to change, according to O'Neill, who argues that reconnaissance followed by spear-phishing or other social engineering attacks has become the go-to spying method of the 21st century. Much of this is targeted towards industrial espionage with China and (to a much smaller extent) Russia primarily to blame, he says.