The US will lose a cyber war as it lacks online security "hygiene", a former top American official said on Sunday, amid reports of over 70 attacks on its installations along with that of countries like India in the last five years.

"If the nation went to war today in a cyber-war, we would lose. We would lose. We're the most honorable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose," Admiral retired Mike McConnell, former Director on National Intelligence told CNN in an interview.

McConnell's remarks gains significance in the wake of the latest report of McAfee on cyber-attacks according to which over the past five years, there have been over 70 victims of cyber spying, including the US, UN and India, and that the spying was done by a state actor, which everyone assumes to be China.

McConnell said as a matter of fact, the United States does not even practice what he called cyber security hygiene. "When I saw the report, I was glad to see it. It's now making the information available to the public. The way I would describe the report is the tip of the iceberg. It's much worst than what was included in the McAfee report," McConnell said.

All governments, sophisticated governments, run an electronic espionage effort; he said adding that the G8 are the most sophisticated. "The United States has a policy of looking for adversaries who might wish us harm, military secrets, military capabilities and so on. We have a policy of not doing economic espionage. Not all those G8 countries have the same policy. In fact they focus on economic espionage," he said.

 "We could eliminate much of it if we just did the basic things, be aware, change passwords, configure our systems appropriately, but we don't. We are in a situation now where this nation state is literally bleeding the intellectual capital and innovation engine out of this country. If that persists for a long time, it's going to take away a significant economic advantage that we have," he said.

"A terrorist group that had cyber skills could attack the critical infrastructure of this country, particularly in the heat of summer or the cold of winter and cause chaos. It could disrupt banking, electric power," he said.

"And remember there was a blackout in about 2003 in the northeast. We were without power for several days. And it put us on the brink of chaos. It's possible for a relatively small group to be able to do that to the country today. Now, if you go to cyber war where we were mad at someone, we were exchanging hostilities in some way, some of these nation states have penetrated our systems, not only to gain information advantage, but to leave capability that can be used later on when there is a crisis of some sort," he said.

"So at one level we're losing our economic advantage of our innovation engine. And at another level, we haven't adequately addressed the potential for a terrorist group, someone that would not be deterred from inflicting major damage on what I call the soft underbelly of the country," McConnell said.