Category Archives: deterrence

Senators want Cyber Command and CISA to do more to deter coronavirus-focused hackers

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A bipartisan group of senators sent a letter to both the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security on Monday urging them to take more action to defend the U.S. healthcare sector against hackers that have been exploiting the coronavirus pandemic. The senators warned that if Gen. Paul Nakasone, the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, and Christopher Krebs, Director of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), don’t take more action to deter hackers, they will continue to pummel the U.S. healthcare sector will continue to get pummeled with coronavirus hacking campaigns. “Unless we take forceful action to deny our adversaries success and deter them from further exploiting this crisis, we will be inviting further aggression from them and others,” Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; David Perdue, R-Ga.; and Edward Markey, D-Mass. write. “The cybersecurity threat to our stretched and stressed medical and public health systems should […]

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Elizabeth Warren wants to overhaul U.S. election security

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a plan focused on election security Tuesday that would replace every voting machine in the U.S. with “state-of-the-art” technology and require states to follow federal standards for federal elections. Warren, who is running for president, would replace outdated voting systems with voter-verified paper ballot machines, mandate voting equipment be paid for by the federal government, and require risk-limiting audits before elections take place. The proposal also makes the federal government responsible for election cybersecurity. “Our democracy is too important for it to be under-resourced and insecure,” Warren wrote in a post on Medium. “We have a solemn obligation to secure our elections from those who would try to undermine them.” Beyond requiring risk-limiting audits, Warren’s plan would add a condition for states seeking federal funding for elections administration. Among the conditions would be an examination of how states are making voting more convenient. “The federal […]

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PPD-20 successor has yielded ‘operational success,’ Federal CISO says

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A revamped policy framework for offensive U.S. cyber operations is much quicker than its predecessor and has yielded “operational success,” a top White House cybersecurity official said Tuesday. Last August, President Donald Trump rescinded the Obama-era policy, known as Presidential Policy Directive 20, which governed U.S. hacking operations, and replaced it with the new framework. Critics said PPD-20’s intricate interagency process unnecessarily delayed offensive operations, while advocates called it an important mechanism for accounting for all of the potential repercussions of a cyberattack. The new structure “gives more authority to the people who need to actually make those decisions” about offensive operations, Grant Schneider, the federal information security officer, said at an event hosted by the nonprofit Intelligence and National Security Alliance. U.S. officials are focused on ensuring that the Pentagon “has the tools available to leverage offensive cyber capabilities,” he added. The remarks from Schneider, the National Security Council’s top defensive-focused […]

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NSA’s Joyce outlines how U.S. can disrupt and deter foreign hacking

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The United States will do more to disrupt the malicious cyber-activity that foreign adversaries are aggressively using to advance their interests, a National Security Agency official said Thursday. “We have to impose costs in a visible way to start deterrence,” said Rob Joyce, senior cybersecurity adviser at NSA. “We have to go out and try to make those operations less successful and harder to do.” Speaking to an industry association in Hanover, Maryland, Joyce cited the 2017 WannaCry and NotPetya malware outbreaks — and Russia’s use of information operations in the 2016 U.S. election — as examples of nation-states moving from “exploitation to disruption” to impose their will in cyberspace. Washington has blamed North Korea and Russia, respectively, for the devastating WannaCry and NotPetya attacks, which cost billions of dollars in economic damage. Some foreign governments have less legal constraints on their activities in cyberspace than the U.S., Joyce told a local […]

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U.S. announces disruption of ‘Joanap’ botnet linked with North Korea

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The Justice Department on Wednesday announced a wide-ranging operation to map and disrupt a botnet linked to North Korea that has infected numerous computers across the globe over the last decade. Through a search warrant and court order, the department inflicted a potentially damaging blow to the so-called Joanap botnet, which U.S. officials attributed to the North Korean government. The search warrant allowed the FBI to control servers that mimicked computers within the botnet, giving the bureau a clearer picture of the zombie computer army and the ability to alert victims. Joanap is malware that targets Microsoft Windows. It works in tandem with a worm dubbed Brambul that stalks computers, looking for a vulnerable way in, the Justice Department said in a press release. “Once installed on an infected computer, Joanap would allow the North Korean hackers to remotely access infected computers,” giving them root-level access and the chance to […]

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Rep. Langevin: We need a DHS briefing to understand extent of DNS hijacking threat

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A key House Democrat wants the Department of Homeland Security to brief lawmakers “as soon as possible” on a new domain name system hacking threat to federal computer networks, and the emergency order the department issued in response. DHS should brief members of the House Homeland Security Committee on the cyberthreat because “we need to understand the scope of this action and how many agencies were actually affected,” Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., said in an interview Wednesday. Langevin was reacting to a rare emergency directive that DHS issued Tuesday ordering civilian agencies to tighten security controls in the face of a suspected Iranian hacking campaign. DHS issued the order out of concern that civilian agencies could be vulnerable to cyberattacks on platforms for managing domain name system (DNS) records, which help ensure that a computer user reaches an intended website. By manipulating DNS records, hackers could direct unwitting users to malicious websites. At least […]

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National intelligence strategy seeks better insight into adversaries’ cyber capabilities

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A national intelligence strategy released Tuesday calls on U.S. spy agencies to improve their understanding of what is driving foreign adversaries’ growing cyber capabilities. The strategy, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, pledges that intelligence agencies will “increase our awareness and understanding of adversaries’ use of cyber operations—including leadership plans, intentions, capabilities, and operations— to inform decisions and enable action.” The stakes are high; America’s spies must keep pace with growing list of hacking capabilities at adversaries’ disposal, according to the ODNI. “As the cyber capabilities of our adversaries grow, they will pose increasing threats to U.S. security, including critical infrastructure, public health and safety, economic prosperity, and stability,” the document says. There has been no shortage of recent foreign hacking threats to U.S. public and private organizations, from suspected Iranian targeting of domain name systems to alleged Chinese economic espionage. The new strategy recognizes that the […]

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As China tensions mount, U.S. officials outline efforts to combat economic espionage

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In congressional testimony Wednesday, U.S. officials described the vast scope of alleged Chinese theft of American intellectual property and outlined ongoing efforts to counter such threats amid a dispute with Beijing. From 2011 to 2018, more than 90 percent of Justice Department cases claiming economic espionage by a state or for its benefit involved China, Assistant Attorney General John Demers said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “The [Chinese] playbook is simple: rob, replicate, and replace,” Demers said, describing Beijing’s alleged efforts to build technology-rich companies through stolen American know-how. China is “the most severe counterintelligence threat facing our country today,” said Bill Priestap, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. The hearing comes at a fraught time for U.S.-China relations on technology, trade, and cybersecurity issues. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleged during an interview Wednesday with Fox News that China is responsible for a data breach at Marriott that exposed personal […]

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Ex-NSA chief welcomes more U.S. offensive operations in cyberspace

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Former National Security Agency director Michael Rogers has welcomed the Trump administration’s willingness to use cyber-operations to deter foreign adversaries, adding that the United States’ previous reluctance to do so was counterproductive. “My argument when I was [in government was]: “We want to keep the full range of options and capabilities available,” Rogers said Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “One of the things that frustrated me at times was: Why are we taking one element just straight off the table?” said Rogers, who left the administration in May for the private sector. “I just thought, boy, if you’re in Moscow or Beijing, you are loving this approach to life because it doesn’t really change your risk calculus,” Rogers added. While NSA director from 2014 to 2018, he also led U.S. Cyber Command. Presidential Policy Directive 20, which then-President Barack Obama signed in 2012, had installed an intricate inter-agency legal […]

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Pentagon, DHS agree to framework for joint cyberdefense

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The departments of Defense and Homeland Security have agreed to a framework that more clearly articulates the agencies’ roles and responsibilities in defending U.S. networks from advanced cyberthreats, officials told lawmakers Wednesday. A joint memo recently signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “is a major step forward in fostering closer cooperation and marks a sea change in the level of collaboration between our departments,” Kenneth Rapuano, an assistant secretary of Defense, said at House Armed Services subcommittee hearing. Under the agreement, the departments will jointly prioritize a list of civilian assets that are critical to the U.S. military’s “ability to fight and win wars and project power,” and work to protect them, said Jeanette Manfra, DHS’s top cybersecurity official. That will shape a common understanding of threats at the agencies, which in turn can help the private and public sectors defend their networks, she added. DHS will […]

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