Hacking: What journalists need to know
The hacking of Democratic Party organizations has made internet security germane to the 2016 presidential election campaign. America’s intelligence community has accused high-level Russian officials of backing these cyberattacks in an attempt to influence the election result. Such allegations have helped thrust relations between Washington and Moscow to their lowest point in decades.
Meanwhile, the integrity of America’s internet infrastructure was tested on Oct. 21, 2016 with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
Journalist’s Resource spoke with security expert Bruce Schneier about the attacks and what journalists need to know. The interview, conducted by email while Schneier was traveling, has been edited for length.
Schneier is the chief technology officer at Resilient (an IBM company focused on security), a board member at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and a New York Times best-selling author. His blog, Schneier on Security, is a resource for security specialists and journalists alike. He wrote a prescient piece about DDoS attacks on his blog a month before the 2016 attack on Dyn.