WASHINGTON, January 23 (Sputnik) — The cyberattack against Sony Pictures Entertainment was not very sophisticated, and shows how unsecure US computer systems are to hacks, US President Barack Obama said during an interview with YouTube creators on Thursday.
“You don’t have to have a lot of equipment in order to be able to do this hacking, in fact the hacking against Sony which we believe was done by North Korea, it wasn’t even that sophisticated,” President Obama said. “But it just goes to show how vulnerable we are.”
President Obama said during Thursday’s interview that his administration was in the process of asking Congress to pass a law that would help the United States fight future cyberattacks that he said he was “confident that this is something that we can actually get some good bipartisan support for.”
In January, President Obama announced a new cybersecurity legislative proposal which encouraged private companies to share cyber threat information with government agencies to protect them from cyber incidents.
The new cybersecurity proposal would help modernize law enforcement authorities to combat cybercrimes and criminalize the overseas sale of stolen US financial information, according to the White House. Penalties for computer crimes will be in line with other similar non-cyber illegal activities.