01/16/2015

Which Cyber Hacks Should We Worry About?

12:23 minutes

President Obama has spent the last week pushing for new cybersecurity legislation in the wake of several high-profile breaches. Yet, when it comes to the word “hack,” the exact meaning of the term has become increasingly murky. Do cyber attacks on corporations and acts of “cybervandalism” on Twitter, for example, both pose the same level of threat? Molly Sauter, author of The Coming Swarm, explains what differentiates the brief takeover of U.S. Central Command’s social media accounts this week from, say, the recent break-in on the Sony Pictures Entertainment computer network.

Segment Guests

Molly Sauter

Molly Sauter is a research associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and author of The Coming Swarm (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) based in Montreal, Canada.

Meet the Producer

About Becky Fogel

Becky Fogel is a newscast host and producer at Texas Standard, a daily news show broadcast by KUT in Austin, Texas. She was formerly Science Friday’s production assistant.