Category Archives: foreign relations

Sen. Menendez questions Twitter about former employees spying for Saudi Arabia

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Sen. Bob Menendez has a lot of questions for Twitter and the Trump Administration after the Justice Department charged two former Twitter employees with spying on behalf of Saudi Arabia. Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who serves as ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has written two letters, one to State Department officials and another to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, asking for details on how Saudi Arabia was able to exploit an American company’s internal systems for its own goals. He also wants to know what Twitter, and the Trump Administration, are doing about it. “As we know from the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi officials carefully surveil social media for any critical voices,” Menendez wrote, referring to The Washington Post columnist who was an espionage target before he was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year. “However, these public charges reveal the extent to which Saudi Arabia is exploiting American companies […]

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EU countries agree to collectively punish attacker when a member is hacked

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The European Union’s 28-nation bloc is in agreement concerning how to punish hackers. On Monday, the European Council announced a joint framework, dubbed the “cyber diplomacy toolbox,” to guide how member countries should uniformly respond to malicious cyber activity, which includes steps to cooperatively impose economic sanctions, travel bans, asset freezes and blanket bans against responsible parties. “The key principle here is proportionality,” an EU official told CyberScoop. “It is EU member states who would decide what measure should be used depending on the case they would face … This work aims to promote enhanced shared situational awareness, information sharing and efficient decision-making, and should see the development of a procedure for the attribution of cyber attacks in the context of the cyber diplomacy toolbox.” Use of the “toolbox” is voluntary in nature and any collective response would require unanimous EU member support. In short, the framework represents an ambitious […]

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Russia is ‘ready to discuss’ election hacking and cybercrime with U.S.

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The Russian government is open to discussions with the United States on a wide range of cybersecurity issues including election hacking and cybercrime, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told the daily Russian political newspaper Kommersant. Even the question of election hacking “is not a taboo for us, although it had been made extremely tense by the efforts of the Obama team,” Ryabkov said Wednesday. “We are ready to discuss with the Americans the whole range of these questions.” Attempts at dialogues with the Obama administration were met with silence, he said. Having renewed those attempts now with the Trump administration, Ryabkov “expects the response will be more positive.” “Classical” cybercrime including bank fraud and intellectual property theft is also on the table for discussions and possible cooperation, the foreign minister said. The prospect of greater Russian government cooperation with the West on issues of cybercrime looms large because the Russian-speaking sphere is a widely seen as […]

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WikiLeaks releases supposed CIA documents detailing U.S. hacking operations

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WikiLeaks has published a cache of 8,761 files it claims provide insight into the CIA’s extensive computer hacking operations, including a description of tools and targeted technologies. In what is apparently the first in series of upcoming releases dubbed “Vault 7,” the controversial transparency organization claims that this will be the most comprehensive publication of confidential documents in CIA history. The series’ first installment is named “Year Zero.” It contains information related to dozens of supposed zero-day exploits developed for use against software and hardware created by prominent American technology firms like Apple, Google and Microsoft, among others. In theory, such capabilities would allow spies to compromise older operating systems found on iPhones and Android smartphones. WikiLeaks has yet to release any of the code behind these exploits, claiming that it will not do so “until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and […]

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