Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
By DAMIAN PALETTA
WASHINGTON—The top U.S. intelligence official signaled Thursday that China is behind the theft of millions of personnel records from the federal government, marking the administration’s most pointed assignment of blame since the breach was announced June 4.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking at a Washington intelligence conference, said China was the “leading suspect” in the attacks, while also adding, “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did,” given the difficulty of the intrusion.
The administration before now had avoided attributing the breach to China in public, though numerous U.S. officials privately have said the hackers were Chinese.
Officials are still studying how many people could have been impacted, though they believe 18 million Social Security numbers could have been compromised.
Mr. Clapper said China will continue to try to steal information from the government and from American companies until policy makers address the “lack of deterrents, the psychology of deterrents” against stealing intellectual property or private records.
“The challenge here, the problem for us, frankly, is until such time as we can create both the substance and the psychology of deterrence, this is going to go on,” he said, alluding to the internal battle within the White House as to how they should respond to cyberattacks.
“And that’s been frankly a struggle for us, because of concerns about unintended consequences and other related policy issues.”
He said the lack of a threat of retribution from the U.S. government means that policy makers must focus “a lot more attention to defense.”
U.S. officials have been careful not to reveal the internal tussling over how to respond to large-scale cyberattacks, though they have acknowledged they lack a clear approach.
Both Defense Secretary Ash Carter and National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers have said the U.S. should come up with a clear protocol for how it responds to cyberattacks, in part to warn hackers about the consequences of their actions.
Mr. Clapper said Thursday that this would mean once a hacker crossed “a red line, at that point, what are we going to do about it?”
Asked if he would recommend any specific response to the Chinese, Mr. Clapper said that was up to the White House and others.
“We are just down in the engine room shoveling intelligence coal,” he said.
“I’m not going to mention anything particular about the OPM incident because it’s still under FBI investigation at this moment in time, and we have not come out with specific statements from the government,” he said.
It is relatively unusual for the U.S. government to identify suspected cyberthieves, though that may be changing.
In December, the White House accused North Korea of stealing and destroying large amounts of records from Sony Pictures Entertainment.
In May 2014, a federal grand jury indicted five Chinese military hackers for “computer hacking, economic espionage” and other offenses against entities that included a U.S. nuclear plant.
In annual talks in Washington this week, senior Obama administration officials were careful not to publicly tie China to the recently disclosed breach of millions of personnel files.
Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Wednesday that talks with China about cybersecurity were open and honest but didn’t include accusations or finger-pointing.
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