Former congresswoman Mary Bono reacts to CENTCOM cyber attack
Federal investigators working to determine how hackers, professing ties to ISIS, hacked into the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the U.S. Central Command. The branch of the Department of Defense oversees military operations in the Middle East.
“I can tell you this is something that we’re looking into and something that we take seriously,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Ernest.
U.S. officials say no sensitive information was compromised, but hackers posted inflammatory messages including this warning: “American soldiers we are coming. Watch your back.”
Former congresswoman Mary Bono, who is now the Senior Vice President at FaegreBD Consulting, served on the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Bono says this is the new battlefront in the war on terror.
“It’s a new burgeoning threat to the free world and we’re going to have to throw an awful lot at it really quickly to get a handle on it,” Bono said.
The White House said Monday there’s a difference between a twitter hacking and major data breaches, such as the ones that affected Target and Home Depot. But as news of the CENTCOM attack emerged, President Obama proposed legislation aimed at protecting against identity theft.
“This is a direct threat to the economic security of American families and we’ve got to stop it,” President Obama said.
The “Personal Data Notification and Protection Act” would require companies to alert customers within 30 days if a breach compromises personal information. The bill is familiar territory for Bono.
“This was my data protection bill we wrote three years ago and we got great traction in Congress but this was still an issue that people in congress didn’t understand or recognize the threat that was out there,” she said.
Bono says the CENTCOM hack is a reminder we should do everything we can to protect our own accounts, and pressure politicians to ensure security on a national scale.
“This is a huge problem and it’s amazing to me that Sony was the first hack that awakened people to the fact that this is potential serious harm out there,” Bono said.
