Category Archives: Diplomacy

Extortion and alleged ISIS threats: A Saudi embassy learned the hard way about email security

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When Saudi Arabia contacted security researcher Chris Kubecka to investigate an apparent intrusion into its Dutch embassy’s secured email accounts, she knew it was not going to be a simple case. Local laws in the Hague did not apply, since the embassy is considered Saudi soil. And it only got more complicated after Kubecka got to work: Once the email account was secured, the attacker — who claimed ISIS affiliation — left a trail suggesting an insider was responsible and then threatened to kill hundreds of innocent people if certain demands weren’t met. The escalations sent Kubecka, the Saudis, the Dutch and dozens of other diplomats scrambling on an international whodunnit — a hacking case that emphasized the high-stakes challenges and troublesome gray areas that come with securing diplomatic communications. The particular account that was compromised — the Saudi ambassador’s secretary’s email — was on its secure embassy system, according to Kubecka, whom the Saudi government brought in […]

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Estonia debuts first-ever cyber diplomacy training

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Dozens of NATO and EU diplomats who focus on cybersecurity issues descended upon Estonia last week for their first-ever “summer school” training on cyber diplomacy. The sessions focused on lessons learned from previous international negotiations on cybersecurity issues, technical developments on the latest cyberthreats, and international norms and laws in cyberspace. For five days the 80 diplomats participated with cybersecurity experts and academics in conversations and a simulation of a real-world international cybersecurity crisis, Britta Tarvis, media adviser for the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told CyberScoop. The objective was to help diplomats from EU and NATO countries get “a more in-depth understanding” of cybersecurity strategies and technological developments, and how those topics affect the implementation of norms and international law, Tarvis said. Twenty-six countries were represented. The development of what is accepted nation-state behavior in cyberspace is still in its nascent stages. It was only five years ago that NATO incorporated cyberattacks into its collective defense agreement, for instance, […]

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State Department proposes new $20.8 million cybersecurity bureau

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The State Department has sent to Congress a long-awaited plan to reestablish a cybersecurity-focused bureau it says is key to supporting U.S. diplomatic efforts in cyberspace. The State Department’s new plan, obtained by CyberScoop, would create the Bureau of Cyberspace Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) to “lead U.S. government diplomatic efforts to secure cyberspace and its technologies, reduce the likelihood of cyber conflict, and prevail in strategic cyber competition.” The new bureau, with a proposed staff of 80 and projected budget of $20.8 million, would be led by a Senate-confirmed coordinator and “ambassador-at-large” with the equivalent status of an assistant secretary of State, who would report to the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. The idea comes nearly two years after then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced he would abolish the department’s cybersecurity coordinator position and put its support staff under the department’s economic bureau. CSET would “unify the policy functions and […]

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Congress again wants the State Department to pay more attention to the internet

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Prominent House members are again seeking to create a high-level position within the State Department dedicated to advancing U.S. cybersecurity interests worldwide. The Cyber Diplomacy Act would require the department to open an Office of International Cyberspace Policy, whose top official would report directly to the secretary of State or deputy secretary of State. The office’s primary goals would be to advocate democratic ideals for cyberspace and push back against Russian and Chinese effects to “extort more control and censorship over the internet,” say the bill’s sponsors, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the panel’s ranking member. The legislation closely resembles a bill passed by the House and approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2018. That version only specified that the head of the new office should be designated an assistant secretary of State. It also called for the office to have a broader purview that included the “digital economy.” The proposals surfaced last Congress after then-Secretary […]

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Diplomacy won’t stop North Korean hacking, South Korean officials say

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Top South Korean cybersecurity experts don’t expect Donald Trump’s diplomacy to slow down North Korean cyberattacks Speaking through interpreters at a Brookings event Thursday, two of South Korea’s leading cybersecurity experts said that they’re no longer able to cope with the sheer volume of attacks emanating from the North. In the past decade, every well-known South Korean organization has been hacked or targeted by North Korea, noted SangMyung Choi, chief of South Korea’s Computer Emergency Response Team. At the Washington, D.C., event, Choi showed off a slide deck that warned: “there is no place that is not hacked” and “we are in the real cyberwarfare.” “A lot of these attacks have not been [revealed] to the South Korean public, but today I confess to you that it’s been very prevalent,” Choi said. Since May 2018, he revealed, North Korean-backed hackers have launched spear phishing and watering hole attacks in forged documents […]

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After Trump courts Kim, U.S. issues warning on North Korean malware

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Days after the historic United States-North Korea summit, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI have warned U.S. industry about a malware variant tied to North Korean government hackers. The DHS-FBI report released Thursday on the malware, dubbed Typeframe, analyzes 11 samples, including infected Windows files and a malicious Microsoft Word document. “These files have the capability to download and install malware, install proxy and remote access Trojans, connect to command and control servers to receive additional instructions, and modify the victim’s firewall to allow incoming connections,” the report states. Pyongyang’s hackers have gotten considerably more advanced in recent years, allegedly carrying out brazen attacks on banks around the world. Ahead of the high-profile meeting this week between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, North Korean hackers were not letting up their activity, attacking companies in Asia, Europe, and the United States. The DHS-FBI report encourages computer users to report any […]

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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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The uphill battle to relaunch State Department’s cybersecurity policy office

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Be it through legislation or some internal decree, restoring the State Department’s cybersecurity policy office to a prominent place in the agency can’t come soon enough for advocates of U.S. digital diplomacy. Analysts and former government officials say U.S. leadership in shaping international behavior in cyberspace has stalled at a time when nation-state hacking groups are flexing their muscles. “I worry about a gap that leaves allies wondering and adversaries savoring the chance to take advantage of the perceived lack of U.S. leadership,” Christopher Painter, State’s former cybersecurity coordinator, told CyberScoop. “When you have diminished resources [and] when you have uncertainty, inevitably that causes some loss of momentum.” In the eight months since former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he would downgrade the department’s cybersecurity office, the United States has blamed North Korea for the destructive WannaCry ransomware attack, indicted Iranian hackers for terabytes worth of intellectual property theft, and […]

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