US cyber policy to blame for virus attacks

NSA's failure to manage cyber weapons alarming

Liu Quan, a senior researcher in cyber security at the China Center for Information Industry Development, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology

The WannaCry virus attack shows not only the chaos hackers can create, but also how powerful the US is in terms of cyber warfare. WannaCry has been confirmed to be a variant of EternalBlue, a cyber weapon developed by the NSA. And it is only one of the innumerable powerful weapons in the NSA cyber arsenal. To name a few: eternal king, eternal romance, eternal collaboration, emerald fiber, quirky hamster, and EskimoRoll.

According to Wikileaks, some of these weapons could infect 70 percent of the world's computers using Windows, which shows the US is rather hegemonic when it comes to computer viruses. Instead of helping internet companies plug the loopholes in the Windows operating system after discovering them, the US developed cyber weapons, which gives it an asymmetric advantage in terms of cyber security.

Worse, the NSA has failed to manage these cyber weapons well, as they have been leaked many times causing huge losses to internet users across the globe. That's an act of irresponsibility for which the NSA should be answerable.