Category Archives: congress

With Will Hurd’s retirement, Congress loses a key cybersecurity advocate

Posted on by

When Rep. Will Hurd made news Thursday night, just as the cybersecurity community was preparing to descend on Las Vegas for a week of events, it wasn’t about Hurd’s rescinded offer to speak at the Black Hat conference. The Texas Republican announced he will not seek re-election in 2020, becoming the sixth GOP representative and the third Texan in the past 10 days to announce retirement. Hurd, a former CIA officer, had distinguished himself among lawmakers for his attention to cybersecurity issues, including a support for encryption. He was slated to deliver a keynote address at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference next week until organizers canceled his invitation following a TechCrunch article that questioned the congressman’s voting records on women’s rights issues. In a statement on his website, Hurd said that he “made the decision to not seek reelection for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas in order to pursue opportunities outside the halls […]

The post With Will Hurd’s retirement, Congress loses a key cybersecurity advocate appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading With Will Hurd’s retirement, Congress loses a key cybersecurity advocate→

Pentagon cyber contractor charged for allegedly threatening to kill member of Congress

Posted on by

A Department of Defense cybersecurity contractor has been charged with threatening to kill a member of Congress over a bill that would require children in public schools to receive vaccinations, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court earlier this month. Darryl Albert Varnum allegedly left a voicemail at the office of the member of Congress on June 26 saying he would “f—ing come down and kill your f—ing ass” if “you do that bill,” according to an affidavit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He is charged with threatening an official. Minutes after the phone call, on his Facebook page, Varnum allegedly posted about a bill, The Vaccinate All Children Act of 2019, introduced in May in the U.S. House of Representatives. The sponsor of the vaccination bill is Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., who also is the subject of the threat, according to The Daily Beast. The affidavit did not […]

The post Pentagon cyber contractor charged for allegedly threatening to kill member of Congress appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Pentagon cyber contractor charged for allegedly threatening to kill member of Congress→

Voting-machine vendors have some serious questions to answer, senators say

Posted on by

While the security of the 2020 election remains a prominent topic in Washington, a group of Democratic senators is raising alarms about longer-term issues that will resonate after voters are done choosing a president about 20 months from now. The three companies that make most of the voting technology used in the U.S. must be more transparent about their plans to improve their products to meet current expectations about security and performance, says a letter Wednesday by Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and three other top Democrats. In particular, the senators say every machine should reliably produce paper records, and the companies should do far more to upgrade their products. “The integrity of our elections is directly tied to the machines we vote on — the products that you make,” says the letter from Klobuchar, Mark Warner of Virginia, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Gary Peters of Michigan. “Despite shouldering such a massive responsibility, there has been […]

The post Voting-machine vendors have some serious questions to answer, senators say appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Voting-machine vendors have some serious questions to answer, senators say→

US Senators say it shouldn’t be a secret when they’ve been hacked

Posted on by

Federal agencies and companies are required by law to disclose breaches, but Congress is under no such obligation – meaning that the public may have no idea that their political representatives have been hit.
Read more in my article on the Tripwire St… Continue reading US Senators say it shouldn’t be a secret when they’ve been hacked→

Lawmakers want data on the number of times Senate computers have been hacked

Posted on by

The Senate should have an annual tally of when its computers and smartphones have been breached in order to better inform congressional cybersecurity policy, a pair of bipartisan senators says in a letter sent Wednesday to the Senate Sergeant at Arms. Describing Congress as a perennial target for hackers, Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, have asked the Senate Sergeant at Arms (SAA) to be transparent in providing lawmakers with information about the scale of successful hacks of Senate devices, including smartphones. They want annual reports sent to each senator with aggregate data on compromises of computers and other breaches of sensitive Senate data. The senators also asked the SAA to notify the Senate leadership, along with members of the rules and intelligence committees, within five days of breaches to Senate computers being discovered. Right now, lawmakers appear to be in the dark on the issue. “We believe […]

The post Lawmakers want data on the number of times Senate computers have been hacked appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Lawmakers want data on the number of times Senate computers have been hacked→

Foreign VPN apps need a close look from DHS, senators say

Posted on by

The Department of Homeland Security should assess the security threat posed by foreign VPN applications to U.S. government employees, a bipartisan pair of senators says. Some popular VPN apps send a phone’s web-browsing data to servers in countries interested in targeting federal personnel, raising “the risk that user data will be surveilled by those foreign governments,” Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a letter to DHS Thursday. VPN providers promise to obfuscate the physical location of a web browser, but users are generally at the mercy of those companies’ decisions to collect and log data. The senators cite government warnings about products made by Chinese telecommunications companies and Russian antivirus vendor Kaspersky Lab as examples of the surveillance that certain foreign technology can enable. (Kaspersky and Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE have denied those allegations.) “If U.S. intelligence experts believe Beijing and Moscow are leveraging Chinese and Russian-made technology to surveil Americans, […]

The post Foreign VPN apps need a close look from DHS, senators say appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Foreign VPN apps need a close look from DHS, senators say→

Congress must do more in fight against global cybercrime, advocacy group says

Posted on by

In a speech to Interpol in November, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein lobbied other governments to do more to help Washington track down foreign cybercriminals. “By devoting appropriate resources to international cooperation efforts, we can properly address the increasing threat of cybercrime,” he said, adding later: “No nation should exempt itself from just and reasonable law enforcement cooperation.” Rosenstein was acknowledging that regardless of the Department of Justice’s investments in countering cybercrime in the United States, the department’s ability to put foreign crooks behind bars can rest, in part, on other governments’ cooperation in finding and extraditing them. That’s why, analysts say, it’s crucial to fund U.S. programs to boost foreign governments’ ability to crack down on hackers. A new advocacy effort from the think tank Third Way is trying to focus U.S. policymakers’ attention on making those programs more effective. “We think that the U.S. government should be […]

The post Congress must do more in fight against global cybercrime, advocacy group says appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Congress must do more in fight against global cybercrime, advocacy group says→

This Congressman Wants to Build a ‘Digital’ Border Wall that Would Also Provide Rural Broadband

Posted on by

Congressman Will Hurd is the only Republican representing a district along the border, and he wants to use technological solutions to secure the border and possibly close the digital divide. Continue reading This Congressman Wants to Build a ‘Digital’ Border Wall that Would Also Provide Rural Broadband→