Trump and Clinton spar over global cybersecurity threat

Clinton claims cyber threat is 'one of the biggest challenges' facing the next president

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were united in acknowledging the global cyber threat during their first presidential election debate.

Clinton singled out cyber warfare as "one of the biggest challenges facing the next president" and said that cyber attacks from enemy states and governments are becoming increasingly common, before singling out Russia in particular.

"I think cybersecurity, cyber warfare will be one of the biggest challenges facing the next president, because clearly we're facing at this point two different kinds of adversaries," she said. "There are the independent hacking groups that do it mostly for commercial reasons to try to steal information that they can use to make money.

"But increasingly, we are seeing cyber attacks coming from states, organs of states. The most recent and troubling of these has been Russia. There's no doubt now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of organisations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this."

Clinton went on to claim that Vladimir Putin "let loose" cyber criminals to hack into the Democratic National Committee (DNC), an accusation that was met with scepticism by Trump.

"As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said," he said. "We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don't...maybe it was.

"I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?"

Trump went on to claim that the US is "not doing the job we should be doing" when it comes to cybersecurity, before adding that ISIS is "beating us at our own game" when it comes to its use of the internet.