Author Archives: Ryan Duffy

Democrats and Republicans split over using hacked material in campaigns

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Another Democrat-Republican feud is showing that when it comes to politically charged hacking, politics may not stop at the water’s edge. The divide is focused on whether political parties should be allowed to use insider information that’s provided by hackers; similar to what occurred at the state level in 2016. Last week, a Democratic lawmaker on the House Intelligence Committee introduced a bill that would punish federal candidates if they fail to notify the FBI whenever a suspected hacking group offers them political dirt. On Thursday, Rep. Eric Swalwell introduced the “Duty to Report Act.” The proposed law would make it a crime for campaign staffers to not tip the government off to certain suspected hacking activities. Swalwell unveiled the bill on the same week as the two-year anniversary of the now infamous Trump Tower meeting, where Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who ambiguously offered damaging political […]

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NDAA pushes U.S. Cyber Command to be more aggressive

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By the Senate Armed Service Committee’s estimation, the United States has held back in cyberspace. The committee is angling to change that with the latest National Defense Authorization Act, proposing to free up the military on the front lines of cyber conflict, create a new strategic cyber entity and respond to Russian aggressions in-kind. The bill’s authors wrote that lawmakers have long-standing concerns about the lack of an effective U.S. strategy to deter and counter cyber threats. To counter foreign state actors bent on stealing, striking, spying or disrupting in cyberspace, the bill suggests boosting resilience, increasing attribution capabilities, emphasizing defense and enhancing the country’s ability to respond to attacks. “We’re letting episodes define strategy. It should be the other way around, where we clearly articulate our cyber deterrence strategy and rules of engagement,” said Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. By offering […]

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Chinese, Russian hacking groups spy on South Korea amid U.S.-North Korea peace talks

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Ahead of the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore next week, U.S. cybersecurity researchers say that Russian and Chinese hackers are scaling up cyber-espionage operations against South Korea. Cybersecurity giant FireEye found that operations targeting South Korean government ministries and financial institutions were carried out as recently as last month. The firm uncovered multiple incidents of hacking attempts linked to Russian and Chinese advanced persistent threat (APT) groups. The revelations underscore the complicated threat landscape facing Seoul. It is still unclear who exactly was targeted and whether the attackers succeeded in breaching important political organizations, FireEye researchers said. South Korea, a key U.S. ally, must play a delicate balancing act. It has vowed to pursue a diplomatic breakthrough and angled for a better relationship with its northern neighbor, but all bets are off in cyber space. As CyberScoop recently reported, despite Pyongyang and Seoul vowing to pacify the Korean Peninsula, the latter […]

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Bolton reshuffle continues: Trump selects Coast Guard official as new homeland security adviser

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The Trump administration has picked Coast Guard Rear Adm. Douglas Fears as its new homeland security adviser, the White House announced Friday. Fears, with over 30 years of service in the Coast Guard, will replace Tom Bossert, who departed the White House two months ago at the request of incoming national security adviser John Bolton. “Doug Fears brings more than three decades of experience across a range of vital homeland security areas including counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and disaster response to the NSC,” Bolton said in a White House statement. “Doug will serve as the president’s homeland security adviser and my point person on an array of vital tasks ranging from overseeing the NSC Cybersecurity Directorate to coordinating the interagency efforts during disaster response.” An alumnus of the U.S. Naval War College, U.S. Coast Guard Academy and Harvard, Fears has been a special assistant to the president and senior director for resilience policy at […]

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Senators urge John Bolton to reinstate NSC cyber position

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Nineteen Democratic senators called on the Trump administration to reinstate the White House’s top cybersecurity post, which it removed earlier this month. The group, led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., wrote a letter urging National Security Adviser John Bolton to reconsider his decision to eliminate the cybersecurity coordinator position, which was housed in the National Security Council (NSC). The senators expressed concern that eliminating the role “will lead to a lack of unified focus against cyber threats.” “Our country’s cybersecurity should be a top priority,” the senators wrote. “Therefore, it is critically important that the U.S. government present a unified front in defending against cyberattacks.” The senators highlighted Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election and cited Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who testified earlier this year that “Russia will conduct bolder and more disruptive cyber operations during the next year.” “Eliminating the Cybersecurity Coordinator role keeps us from presenting that unified front and […]

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The U.S. military combined cyber and kinetic operations to hunt down ISIS last year, general says

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The military used a combination of kinetic attacks, like missile strikes, with cyber operations, to fight ISIS in an important battle last year, a senior U.S. official revealed recently. U.S. Cyber Command, the country’s leading cyber warfare force, was involved in secretly launching a series of disruptive-style cyberattacks against the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2017 which knocked out their computer systems in Iraq. The tactic caused the terrorists to leave their heavy command posts, exposing them to a more conventional attack. Last week, for the first time, the former commander of the Army’s anti-ISIS coalition discussed a covert operation in detail where U.S. forces and allies successfully used offensive cyber measures to hunt down enemy forces. Gen. Stephen Townsend, who commanded Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in 2017, told an audience of Hawaii conference-goers via teleconference that the coalition cyberattacks leveled against ISIS were part of “a multi-domain operation […]

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Encryption advocates rip FBI over inflated encrypted device statistics

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Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a strongly worded letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray Wednesday, voicing concern that the FBI “repeatedly misled” the public and lawmakers on how many devices it was locked out of due to devices being encrypted. On Tuesday, the FBI admitted that in public speeches and sworn congressional testimony over the last year, it has dramatically overstated the number of encrypted phones it cannot access. “The government has long held discredited views about encryption,” Wyden wrote. “Now we see that the FBI is struggling with basic arithmetic—clearly it should not be in the business of dictating the design of advanced cryptographic algorithms.” Wyden also charged that the FBI “exploited” the 2015 shooting in San Bernardino to push tech companies for a way to bypass encryption during investigations. “We see the same calculations today with the overstatement of inaccessible devices… [the FBI] is either too sloppy in its […]

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