Category Archives: deterrence

Trump’s executive order designed to ‘counter the visuals of Helsinki’

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A top State Department official says President Donald Trump’s new executive order to combat foreign election-meddling is an inter-agency check on the optics of the Helsinki Summit in July, where Trump questioned whether the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. “The president can always decide ‘no,’” – meaning sanctions won’t be imposed — “but [the executive order] is designed to have these assessments come up from the bottom and be presented with the notion that there should in fact be a consequence to bad behavior,” Michele Markoff, the State Department’s deputy coordinator for cyber issues, said Wednesday at an Atlantic Council panel discussion in Washington, D.C. The executive order, signed by Trump Wednesday, allows for “automatic sanctions” to kick in when U.S. officials find evidence of foreign interference in the electoral process. That automaticity “was designed to counter the visuals of Helsinki,” Markoff said. “All policy is going […]

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House passes deterrence bill that would call out nation-state hackers

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The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bipartisan bill aimed at deterring foreign governments from conducting operations against U.S. critical infrastructure. The Cyber Deterrence and Response Act put forth by Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., calls on the president to identify individuals and organizations engaged in state-sponsored hacking that significantly threatens U.S. interests., and then to impose one or more of a slew of sanctions on them. That “naming and shaming” approach is an effort to ward off future cyberattacks from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — four countries that U.S. officials routinely label as top adversaries in cyberspace. The bill, which passed the House by voice vote, also calls for a uniform list of foreign hacking groups to be published on the Federal Register. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., last month introduced companion legislation in the Senate. “Our foreign adversaries have developed sophisticated cyber capabilities that disrupt our networks, […]

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Pence urges states to accept federal help in securing elections

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Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday delivered the most direct and high-profile appeal from the Trump administration to states to accept federal aid in securing election systems, citing a recent “malware attack” in Kansas as a need for state-federal cooperation. “Take advantage of the assistance offered by our administration,” Pence said at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity summit in New York City. “Do everything in your power to strengthen and protect your election systems.” “It concerns us that many states still don’t have concrete plans to update their voting systems,” said Pence, the former governor of Indiana. “Fourteen states are struggling to replace outdated voting machines that lack paper trails before the next presidential election [in 2020].” To emphasize the need for federal election-security assistance, the vice president shed light on what he described as a “malware attack” within the last two weeks in Finney County, Kansas. Finney County […]

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McCaul: U.S. should go on the cyber offensive if Russia hacks midterms

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The United States should respond with offensive cyber operations if the Russian government tries to meddle in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections like it did in the 2016 presidential election, according to an influential Republican lawmaker. “Personally, if [the Russians] attempt to do that again in the 2018 midterms, I think there should be an offensive response to it,” Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters Wednesday. In January 2017, the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian government-linked hackers meddled in the 2016 presidential election as part of a broad Kremlin-backed effort to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump. Over the last several months, senior U.S. intelligence officials have repeatedly warned of the possibility of renewed Russian information operations ahead of midterm elections this fall. While nothing on the scale of the 2016 meddling has been detected yet for the 2018 cycle, a public […]

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Top State Department cyber official ‘optimistic’ of deal with Russia, China

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The State Department’s top cybersecurity official says he is “optimistic” the United States can strike a deal on norms for government behavior in cyberspace with China and Russia, two of Washington’s biggest adversaries in the domain. Despite myriad grievances with the Russian and Chinese governments over their hacking operations, Robert Strayer said there is ample precedent for a new agreement involving the three cyber powers. “I think that it is possible because we have had three successful processes at the [United Nations] that have established that international law applies to cyberspace just like it does in the real world,” Strayer, a deputy assistant secretary of State, said in an interview. “All of those successful, consensus-based documents required that the U.S., China, and Russia came to agreement on the terms.” Despite that history, the latest round of talks at the UN forum, known as the Group of Governmental Experts, collapsed in […]

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DHS chief: We’re cracking down on hackers more than Obama did

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The U.S. government is trying to more effectively deter cyberattacks by imposing clear consequences on nation-state-linked hackers, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday, casting the Trump administration as tougher on the issue than the Obama administration. “This is one of those areas where deterrence has to be clear,” Nielsen said Thursday at a Capitol Hill security event. “We will no longer stand by while nation-states attack the government or our private sector entities.” “For so long, we’ve had these attacks, it’s taken us over a year to attribute it in some cases,” she said. “Then you attribute it, nothing happens.” Under both presidential administrations, the U.S. has clamped down on hackers linked with the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian governments through indictments and sanctions. In 2014, Obama’s Department of Justice brought the first U.S. charges of cyber-espionage against a nation-state with the indictment of five Chinese military officers. In March, Trump’s DOJ indicted nine Iranian […]

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Senate to review fusion center plan to deter Russian cyberattacks

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Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Wednesday they would consider plans offered by a Obama administration official to fight back against Russian aggression in cyberspace. Victoria Nuland, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told lawmakers that it would be pragmatic for the country to consider a new “fusion center” to deter foreign election meddling similar to what occurred in 2016. The approach Nuland described would look like the counter-terrorism model pursued by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “On the President’s direction and with Congressional support, the Trump Administration could immediately establish a multi-agency Fusion Center, modeled on the National Counter Terrorism Center [(NCTC)] but smaller in size, to pull together all the information and resources of our government to identify, expose and respond to state-sponsored efforts to undermine American democracy through disinformation, cyberattack, and abuse of the internet,” Nuland said. Senior […]

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The latest attempt by the State Department to set behavior norms

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Following lawmakers’ calls for the Trump administration to lay out a clear cyber deterrence strategy, the State Department has proposed developing a broader set of consequences that the government can impose on adversaries to ward off cyberattacks. The unclassified version of the State Department’s deterrence recommendations, published Thursday, calls for the U.S. to work with allies to inflict “swift, costly, and transparent consequences” on foreign governments that use “significant” malicious cyber activity to harm U.S. interests. To do that, the U.S. government needs to clearly and publicly outline the malicious activity it seeks to deter, according to the State Department report, which was required by a 2017 White House executive order. The document doesn’t go into detail on deterrence tools, but U.S. officials have said that sanctions, indictments, publicly attributing attacks, and covert offensive operations are all on the table. Dating back to the Obama administration, lawmakers have urged the executive branch to delineate a […]

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With White House coordinator gone, DHS official calls for U.S. leadership on cybersecurity

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In the wake of the White House’s decision to eliminate its top cybersecurity position, a Department of Homeland Security official has called on the U.S. government to robustly engage on cyber policy issues on the world stage. The Trump administration should have a “strong voice” at internet standards bodies and other global forums, working with allies and non-allies alike, said Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for DHS’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications. “We have to figure out a way to continue to work together to ensure that the stability of the global system is maintained,” Manfra said Tuesday at the Security Through Innovation Summit, presented by McAfee and produced by CyberScoop. Manfra did not mention the recently-nixed White House cybersecurity coordinator in her remarks, but that position has traditionally been key to the United States’ international cybersecurity work. At a February conference in Germany, for example, then-White House cybersecurity coordinator Rob […]

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National Security Council delays publication of cyber strategy over inclusion of ‘offensive’ measures

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A public summary of the Trump administration’s cyber deterrence strategy has been delayed because of internal disputes over retaliatory hacking measures, two current U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell CyberScoop. According to sources, several National Security Council staffers are seeking edits that further set ground rules for repercussions if an adversary attacks either the U.S. government or a U.S.-based company in cyberspace. The strategy’s outline was supposed to be released last Friday, but was held up after an NSC member requested it be postponed. The summary, although not as comprehensive as the strategy itself, is important because it would broadly inform the public about the government’s secret plan of action and signal to adversaries what behaviors cross a red line. Originally, the Trump administration mandated the cyber deterrence framework through the cybersecurity executive order released in May 2017. The report, a classified document that defines response options for when the country comes under […]

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