Category Archives: Donald Trump

After years of work, Congress passes ‘internet of things’ cybersecurity bill — and it’s kind of a big deal

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Congress last week did something that it rarely does: It passed a meaningful cybersecurity bill. The legislation is aimed at enhancing the safeguards of internet-connected devices — also known as the internet of things (IoT) — such as smart sensors that monitor water quality or control ships in waterway locks. The bill is also a major step toward the federal government encouraging vulnerability disclosure policies that implement programs for organizations to work with security researchers to fix software flaws. “It is arguably the most significant U.S. IoT-specific cybersecurity law to date, as well as the most significant law promoting coordinated vulnerability disclosure in the private sector to date,” said Harley Geiger, director of public policy at Rapid7, a cybersecurity company. All it took to get across the finish line was more than three years of bipartisan work, encroaching state and foreign government IoT rules, a ticking legislative clock, goodwill toward […]

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DHS’s cyber agency is led by career official Brandon Wales. For now.

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Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump fired Chris Krebs, the dust is still settling at the Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity agency that Krebs led. Officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) who have spent months refuting conspiracy theories and battling disinformation surrounding the election say they will continue to do so, despite a White House purge of the agency’s leadership. CISA is now led on an acting basis by Brandon Wales, a 15-year veteran of DHS who is deeply familiar with CISA’s operations after serving as the agency’s top career civil servant. A former senior cybersecurity adviser to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Wales is well-liked at CISA and known for his technical acumen. How long Wales will lead the agency, though, remains unclear. The dismantling of CISA’s leadership has employees on edge. And CISA’s continued work to debunk fraud claims could draw additional White House scrutiny. After Trump fired Krebs via tweet on […]

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Trump fires CISA chief Chris Krebs, who guarded the 2020 election from interference and domestic misinformation

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President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he has fired Chris Krebs, a widely respected Department of Homeland Security official who helped protect the 2020 election from hacking and disinformation, the latest in a series of purges of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. As head of DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Krebs has repeatedly debunked baseless claims from Trump and his allies of widespread electoral fraud while generally avoiding mentioning the president by name. CISA’s “rumor control” public website, which refuted conspiracy theories about stolen votes or dead people voting, reportedly angered the White House. Trump tweeted Tuesday evening that he fired Krebs because his agency issued a “highly inaccurate” statement that the 2020 election was secure. That statement, which was signed by numerous election officials across the country, and backed up by independent security experts, said the election was the most secure in U.S. history. A former Microsoft executive whom […]

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59 security experts reject Trump’s election fraud claims as ‘incoherent’

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A group of 59 computer scientists, researchers and cybersecurity experts on Monday released a letter rejecting President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread electoral fraud as “technically incoherent” and “unsubstantiated” in the latest rebuke of Trump’s campaign to undermine public confidence in the election results. “We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities,” wrote the group of experts, which included Matt Blaze, a cryptologist and professor at Georgetown University, and Alex Stamos, the former security chief at Facebook. “However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” Since multiple media outlets, including Fox News and the Associated Press, on Nov. 7 projected Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, Trump and his allies have continuously made false claims of election fraud. The director of the Department of Homeland Security’s […]

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Smashing Security podcast #204: Green buttons, Olympic attacks, and… an apology

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There’s been a cybersecurity goof in the wake of the US presidential elections, the US fingers the hackers responsible for disrupting the Winter Olympics in South Korea, and we take a long hard look at long hard legal mumbojumbo…

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Biden transition efforts on cybersecurity uncertain as Trump administration throws up obstacles

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Former Department of Homeland Security chiefs cautioned Tuesday that President Donald Trump is endangering national security by blocking the transition to Joe Biden’s presidency, as the standoff stretched days after news organizations declared Biden the victor. “At this period of heightened risk for our nation, we do not have a single day to spare to begin the transition,” said the four former DHS secretaries Tom Ridge, Michael Chertoff, Janet Napolitano and Jeh Johnson. “For the good of the nation, we must start now.” Biden nonetheless plowed ahead with his plans to take over the executive branch, announcing agency review teams sprinkled with former U.S. government cybersecurity officials. But the Trump administration is so far making it difficult, and the dispute potentially stands to hamper cybersecurity on multiple fronts. One of those fronts: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) indicated that it would not work with the Biden transition until after […]

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Former DOJ officials slam Barr’s new policy on election investigations

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Former Justice Department officials on Tuesday sharply criticized Attorney General William Barr for reportedly reversing a longstanding department policy and clearing federal prosecutors to investigate alleged voting irregularities before election results have been certified. “The voters decide the winner in an election, not the president, and not the attorney general,” reads the statement from the Bipartisan Advisory Board of the Voter Protection Program, a nonpartisan election security initiative. The advisory board includes former Justice Department officials who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. “Thanks to a bipartisan group of experienced officials and poll workers across this country, the states, once again, ran fair and secure elections,” the statement continued. “We have seen absolutely no evidence of anything that should get in the way of certification of the results, which is something the states handle, not the federal government.” The criticism follows multiple media reports Monday that Barr gave Justice Department prosecutors the go-ahead to […]

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White House official, former Nunes aide Michael Ellis named NSA general counsel

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The Pentagon’s general counsel has selected Michael Ellis, a White House official and former Republican aide on Capitol Hill who has faced accusations of politicizing intelligence, to be the National Security Agency’s next general counsel, according to a U.S. government official familiar with the matter. In recent months the White House has been repeatedly pressuring the Department of Defense’s general counsel to slate Ellis, who served as Intelligence Committee counsel to Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., as the top attorney at the NSA, a person familiar with the matter told CyberScoop. The appointment of Ellis to a traditionally non-partisan role could raise questions about whether President Donald Trump is seeking to plant political allies throughout the U.S. government before his final 70 days as a “lame duck” president come to a close. The news comes at a turbulent time for the Trump administration. Trump has refused to concede the election, and in recent hours announced he had […]

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How the pandemic helped election officials prepare for a flood of misinformation

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As Americans await the results of a heated presidential contest, election officials are in the spotlight in a country on edge. They are trying to sift through a fog of domestic misinformation, and their methodical process for counting and verifying ballots is belying demands to hurry up, or stop. Now, security experts say months of extraordinary preparation during the coronavirus are paying off. After months of explaining how elections would work during a pandemic, state and local officials are projecting confidence to the public by being open about their work. Election officials have “transformed some of the challenges associated with COVID into opportunities to increase transparency and election administration education,” said Liz Howard, senior counsel at the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Before the election, when many election officials received calls and questions from voters about their absentee ballot security measures, many offered to provide tours of their offices to the […]

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Last-minute court rulings on election go against GOP, voting restrictions

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A federal judge on Monday rejected a Texas GOP bid to throw out approximately 127,000 ballots in largely Democratic Harris County, saying the Republicans failed to demonstrate that they were harmed by the votes cast at extra drive-through locations. It was one of two major election cases to see action on Monday. In both cases, courts sided against conservative challenges over voting in Democrat-friendly jurisdictions. But it might only foreshadow more legal challenges ahead, after the election. In Texas, GOP activist Steven Hotze brought the case alongside Harris County Republicans state Rep. Steve Toth, congressional candidate Wendell Champion and judicial candidate Sharon Hemphill. They contended the extra 10 drive-through stations violated state election law, in an argument that centered on the definition of curbside voting. The clerk for Harris County, Houston’s home, rebutted the conservatives’ argument on several fronts. but the issue of whether they had standing to sue apparently caught the attention of U.S. District Judge Hanen. […]

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