Rich Zeoli Talks To La Salle Professor About Sony Hack
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Rich Zeoli talked to Dean Henry, an Adjunct Professor of Information Security at La Salle University, about the hacking attack on Sony that originated in North Korea and the ramifications moving forward.
Henry said the complexity of the attack sets it apart from a typical criminal hacking.
"This is definitely an attack that hasn't been seen before, multi-pronged, multi-faceted attack that is everything from leaking emails, leaking all kinds of sensitive information to, even now, issuing threats. This is a whole new ballgame."
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He stated that this could be a pre-cursor to a much larger attack on a government agency or public infrastructure, like our power grid.
"This is a movie company that's been attacked. It's a public corporation. It's on a much different scale than, say, attacking the U.S. power grid, but you could probably draw a line from this to something on that scale and say that they're all in the realm of possibility. How likely is it? A lot of experts have been saying that we are particularly vulnerable on our electrical power grid because of old software being used, not being patched, etc. It's just a matter of time before something like that could happen. So I think this is a wake up call. Even though in theory we know this could happen, I think now this has everyone's attention that we need to really take it seriously in every single industry, and especially our critical infrastructure."
Henry believes that no corporation can avoid being targeted by hackers.
"My position is no. I think most of the people in the security industry now say that it is not a matter of if you are attacked; it is just a matter of when. A lot of corporations are assuming they've already been breached. The question is how fast can you detect it and how fast can you shut it down."