Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: Countering threats to America’s cyber security is one of the FBI’s top priorities. I’m Mollie Halpern, and this is FBI, This Week.

One of the investigative tools used to combat the cyber threat is called the Binary Analysis Characterization and Storage System, or BACSS. BACSS is an automated system that analyzes the capability of malware. Unit Chief Steve Pandelides says BACSS can also link FBI cases with the same malicious software.

Steve Pandelides: If an agent in New York submits a piece of malware that an agent in San Francisco previously submitted, BACSS will flag that, and that allows the two agents to discuss case similarities. This is useful for connecting cyber investigations, similar to the way that police officers use fingerprints to link crimes.

Halpern: BACSS assists in all investigations involving malware—including child pornography cases. Prior to BACSS in 2011, cyber investigators manually analyzed about 200 malware samples a year.

Pandelides: In 2013, BACSS analyzed around 2.5 million malware samples. So you can see the power of a system like this.

Halpern: An unclassified version of BACSS called Malware Investigator will be available to members of the public this summer.