The US government is waging electronic warfare on a vast scale — so large that it's causing a seismic shift in the unregulated grey markets where hackers and criminals buy and sell security exploits, Reuters reports.
Former White House cybersecurity advisors Howard Schmidt and Richard Clarke say this move to "offensive" cybersecurity has left US companies and average citizens vulnerable, because it relies on the government collecting and exploiting critical vulnerabilities that have not been revealed to software vendors or the public.
"If the US government knows of a vulnerability that can be exploited, under normal circumstances, its first obligation is to tell US users," Clarke told Reuters. "There is supposed to be some mechanism...
via The Verge - All Posts http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/10/4319278/us-government-hacking-threatens-cybersecurity-former-officials-say http://www.theverge.com/