Hacked

Before the spectacular cyber attack on Sony Pictures or costly hacks at Target, Home Depot and Neiman Marcus, Barack Obama made cybersecurity a signature issue of his presidency. "He gets it," Obama's cyber policy advisers liked to say. Constructing a cybersecurity policy, element by element in neat columns, appealed to the president. An "energized" White House would aggressively work the policy levers amid the dysfunctions of Washington. But the hacks kept coming, each one more pernicious than the last, from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, the Middle East and points unknown. The attacks raised a deeply disturbing question: Was the issue simply beyond the reach of our government, political leaders, business leaders and even technology visionaries to resolve? In Hacked, prominent journalist Charlie Mitchell, one of America's leading cybersecurity reporters, examines the internal power struggles as the Obama administration tried to set a course for the nation, the paralysis on Capitol Hill and industry's desperate effort to stay ahead of both the bad guys and the government, through the lens of the first American cybersecurity presidency.