No Worries About Chinese Hackers

While the intelligence community has uncovered evidence of Chinese penetration of U.S. banking networks, Joel Brenner, national counterintelligence executive, said he's not worried "that the Chinese government wants to bring down our banking system."

Why not? The answer is simple, he said in a transcript of an April 3 speech released today. The Chinese won't hack the U.S. banking system, Brenner said, because "they have too much money invested here."

In his speech, which he gave the speech at the Applied Research Laboratories at the University of Texas in Austin, Brenner also acknowledged news reports that China has poked around in the networks that control the U.S. electric power grid, as well as air traffic control systems' water supply. He said he worries about penetration of those systems, but doubts that today China would take any action. If there was a "dust-up over Taiwan, the answer might be different," Brenner said.

He said Chinese probes of U.S. federal and commercial networks are so relentless and obvious "they don't seem to care about getting caught."

Brenner said he was more concerned about "attacks we don't see" and delivered a backhanded compliment to Russia, which he said is "very good" at sneakier cyber probes than China.