Carl Szabo, Vice President and General Counsel of NetChoice, joins “Fox & Friends” to discuss growing concerns about cyberattacks and the government’s responsibility to “stand up.”
Thursday’s concerns about a spate of power outages were just the beginning of what a law professor warned was an imminent threat to infrastructure and national security.
“The main concern I’m seeing is that these cyberattacks continue to increase, and the government is just trying to pick up the slack,” said Carl, NetChoice vice president and general counsel and Internet law professor. Szabo said. About “FOX & Friends” Friday.
“Less than 0.05% of cyberattacks are prosecuted. That means 99%, 99% of cyberattacks are never prosecuted. So cyberattacks are here to stay,” he added. And someone is dropping the ball. And in this case, it’s the government.”
Early Thursday morning, AT&T service suffered a nationwide outage, particularly affecting service areas in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and Miami. A U.S. defense official told Fox News on Thursday that there was “no indication of a cyberattack.”
As “nation-states” are held responsible for the continued suspension of cyberattacks, pharmacies scramble to respond to sick customers.
The FBI and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) also announced they had launched an investigation into the outages, but a cyberattack on Change Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest healthcare technology companies, caused pharmacies across the country to be shut down Thursday afternoon. Early on, they reported delays in prescription orders.
Legal expert Karl Szabo called on the federal government to “do its job” and prosecute those responsible for the cyberattack. (Getty Images)
Change Healthcare, which processes orders and patient payments across the United States, first became aware of a “cybersecurity issue” impacting its network on the East Coast on Wednesday morning and subsequently disconnected its systems.
“Most cyberattacks take about 280 days to track what happened and where,” Szabo noted. “We found that this was most likely an encounter with a foreigner.”
“This is not new,” the legal expert further warned. “We saw Sony get hacked by North Korea. Just a few years ago, we saw the Colonial Pipeline shut down in a ransomware attack. We also saw a ransomware attack on our hospital. What we need is law enforcement to come out and do the hacking. We need work. We need less debate and more prosecution.”
Cyberattacks against Americans have reached an all-time high over the past two years. Amid growing threats, federal and state funding is helping local governments strengthen their cybersecurity.
Szabo advised Americans to take technological precautions to ensure their personal information is protected from future cyberattacks.
“Make sure you protect your personal email. Use a unique password. Turn on two-factor authentication,” he said. Because we need to ensure our own safety.”
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Technology journalist Kurt Knutson reacts to multiple government agencies investigating AT&T phone outages on “The Craman Countdown.”
AT&T apologized to customers Thursday for the outage and said it was likely caused by a software error. Change Healthcare, meanwhile, did not provide a final schedule for service resumption, but said the outage is expected to last until Friday.
“This is why the United States needs to remain the leader in technological superiority in the world. We gave up our energy independence. We can’t give up our technological independence,” Szabo reflected. .
FOX Business’ Timothy Nerozzi and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
