Political Quotes

“I thank the chairwoman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, in October 2017, the IT Subcommittee held a hearing on cybersecurity of the Internet of Things. This hearing was largely held in response to the Mirai botnet, a massive Distributed Denial of Service, or DDoS, attack, which left the internet inaccessible for much of the East Coast. IoT devices have processing power and an internet connection, but often have little security and no built-in ability to be patched remotely. IoT devices can range from your home routers, security cameras, and baby monitors to smart appliances and industrial sensors. During the Mirai attack, hackers attempted to log in to common devices using 61 username-password combos that are frequently used as a default for IoT devices and never changed. This tactic gave them access to hundreds of thousands of unsecured IoT devices. This attack served as a wake-up call. In 2018, Lieutenant General Robert Ashley, DIA Director, described the exploitation of insecure IoT devices as one of the two ``most important emerging cyber threats to our national security.'' This is why I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation. During the hearing and subsequent process, we learned that the U.S. Government is purchasing these IoT devices without a standard for security to prevent them from being used in such an attack or used as an unauthorized access point to U.S. Government networks.…”