Collaborate Disseminate
Former national intelligence director James Clapper discusses lessons learned from the 2013 Snowden leak as well as the top cyberthreats that the U.S. is currently facing. Continue reading James Clapper: Lessons Learned in a Post-Snowden World
Two weeks before assuming the office of the presidency, Donald Trump was shown highly classified intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered a wave of Russian-sponsored hacking and disinformation blitzes to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. According to the New York Times, who first reported the news Wednesday, the evidence was compiled from Russian military officers’ digital footprints, intercepted by U.S. and allied intelligence agencies, as well as top-secret sources close to Putin, who told the CIA how Moscow orchestrated its digital interference operation. Speaking to CNN on Thursday morning, James Clapper confirmed that Trump was briefed on Putin’s personal involvement in Russia’s 2016 election cyberattacks, adding: “we left very highly classified written documents that laid out in more detail the evidence.” The directors of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and national intelligence, John Brennan, Michael Rogers, James Comey, and Clapper, respectively, briefed the president-elect on January 6, […]
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Continue reading Before taking office, Trump was told Putin ordered DNC hack, reports say
President Donald Trump drew sharp criticism Monday from former intelligence officials and lawmakers after refusing to acknowledge or condemn Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election while standing alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin. Following a closed-door tête-à-tête in Helsinki, Finland, the two leaders held a joint 45-minute press conference. During the wide-ranging session, among other things, the sitting U.S. president publicly declined to back the unanimous findings of his own U.S. intelligence community – that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, through a series of cyberattacks and carefully orchestrated information campaigns. “They said they think it’s Russia; I have asked President Putin, he just said ‘It’s not Russia,” Trump said. “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” Within an hour, former intelligence chiefs were panning Trump and his statements at the press […]
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Continue reading Trump’s refusal to call out Russian hacking provokes swift, sharp backlash
A judge in London sentenced a British teenager who was part of the hacking group Crackas With Attitude, which targeted prominent US government employees. Continue reading Teen Who Hacked Ex-CIA Director John Brennan Gets Sentenced to 2 Years of Prison
When the Obama administration was weighing a response to distributed denial-of-service attacks against U.S. banks in 2012, officials vetoed any retaliation because they were worried that the country’s digital infrastructure wouldn’t be able to deal with counterattacks, according to former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The DDoS attacks, which slammed dozens of U.S. banks with increasing force, were traced back to Iran by U.S. intelligence, Clapper recently told the ICF CyberSci Symposium in Fairfax, Virginia. The attacks, launched from networks of compromised servers around the world, struck 46 major banks and other financial institutions — including Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Hundreds of thousands of customers were unable to access their bank accounts online and the victim companies spent tens of millions of dollars to mitigate the attacks. “We’d all built up quite a head of steam, [thinking] ‘By God, we’re not going […]
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Continue reading Clapper: U.S. shelved ‘hack backs’ due to counterattack fears
When U.S. officials realized last year that Russian intelligence services’ hacking into the IT systems of the Democratic National Committee was just one part of a full-featured information warfare operation, they faced a number of immediate problems, a former White House insider said Wednesday. James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama, said the first dilemma was well-understood: how to warn the American people about the Russian effort to meddle with the election without appearing to put a thumb on the scale. There was a second and much less well-understood problem, though: how to fight back. “We don’t really have a good way to respond” to the efforts like those that were designed to damage Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, Clapper said at Gigamon’s Public Sector Cybersecurity Summit. The information warfare created fake news as well as the real thing — like the stories that came out of the documents dumped from the DNC hack. […]
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Continue reading Former top spy says U.S. not positioned to fight information wars in cyberspace
Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week, including on this week’s U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Service hearing, the Burlington Electric ‘Hack’, FireCrypt, and Security Without Borders.
Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook discuss the news of the week, including on this week’s U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Service hearing, the Burlington Electric ‘Hack’, FireCrypt, and Security Without Borders.
Justin Liverman allegedly encouraged others to publish the personal information of a US government official, and paid to bomb a target phone with spam. Continue reading Defense Fund Launched for Alleged Member of Group That Hacked CIA Director
US authorities have arrested two North Carolina men on charges that they were part of the notorious hacking group “Crackas With Attitude.”
Crackas with Attitude is the group of hackers who allegedly was behind a series of audacious and embarrassing ha… Continue reading FBI Arrests Two Hackers Who Hacked US Spy Chief, FBI and CIA Director