by Kenzie Johnson, UMN Law Student, MJLST Managing Editor
The recent announcements by several large news outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg News, and the Wall Street Journal reporting that they have been the victims of cyber-attacks have yet again brought cyber security into the news. These attacks reportedly all originated in China and were aimed at monitoring news reporting of Chinese issues. In particular, the New York Times announced that Chinese hackers persistently attacked their servers for a period of four months and obtained passwords for reporters and other Times employees. The Times reported that the commencement of the attack coincided with a story it published regarding mass amounts of wealth accumulated by the family of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
It is not only western news outlets that are the targets of recent cyber-attacks. Within the past weeks, the United States Department of Energy and Federal Reserve both announced that hackers had recently penetrated their servers and acquired sensitive information.
This string of high-profile cyber-attacks raises the need for an improved legal and response structure to deal with the growing threat of cyber-attacks. In the forthcoming Winter 2013 issue of Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, and Technology, Susan W. Brenner discusses these issues in an article entitled “Cyber-Threats and the Limits of Bureaucratic Control.” Brenner discusses the nature, causes, and consequences of cyber-threats if left unchecked. Brenner also analyzes alternative approaches to the United States’ current cyber-threat control regime, criticizes current proposals for improvements to the current regime, and proposes alternative approaches. As illustrated by these recent cyber-attacks, analysis of these issues is becoming more important to protect sensitive government data as well as private entities from cyber-threats.
