Category Archives: Joe Biden

Cyber experts question Biden’s tit-for-tat approach with Russia

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President Joe Biden said this week that the U.S. government could respond to Russian cyberattacks on Ukraine “the same way, with cyber.” The answer may have been a standard U.S. government response about responding in-kind, especially in the context of a deteriorating security situation on the border between Ukraine and Russia, with Biden predicting a Russian invasion. National security experts, foreign leaders and Biden’s domestic political opponents criticized his overall remarks on the potential Western response to any Russian incursion, but the cyber-specific comments got their own round of questions from cybersecurity experts as well. To some, Biden’s words reflected dated and misguided thinking that sounds good and tough but makes no sense in the real world. “Tit-for-tat cyber has always been a fantasy for policymakers,” tweeted Jacquelyn Schneider, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University and expert in cyber policy and national security. She pointed to the difficulty that the […]

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Biden signs infrastructure bill that provides nearly $2 billion for cybersecurity

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Presdent Joe Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law on Monday that includes nearly $2 billion for cybersecurity and related provisions. The biggest piece of digital security funding is a Federal Emergency Management Agency cyber grant program, administered in consultation with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that would distribute $1 billion over four years to state and local governments. An additional $21 million would go toward the Office of the National Cyber Director, which has been unable to make key hires since being established earlier this year due to funding shortages. In all, the legislation — known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — is “the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history,” the White House boasted, one that “makes our communities safer and our infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change and cyber-attacks.” […]

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Newly-formed international alliances vow to improve cybersecurity, in moves China sees as affront

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A coalition of four nations — Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. — has committed to promoting cybersecurity standards and practices as one of their chief goals, in one of several recent moves from countries widely viewed as a counter to China in cyberspace and elsewhere. The group, which calls itself the Quad, held its first in-person gathering on Friday. when President Joe Biden hosted Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan at the White House. “Today, we begin new cooperation in cyberspace and pledge to work together to combat cyber threats, promote resilience and secure our critical infrastructure,” the group said in a joint statement. The group will hold more meetings between its leaders and collaborate with industry on improving in areas like the development of secure software, and building up cybersecurity workforces, according to a fact […]

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National cyber director declares ‘too soon to say we’re out of the woods,’ as US enjoys dip in ransomware

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After a summer marked by big ransomware attacks from suspected Russian gangs, some of those same groups went quiet. National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said Thursday that it’s too early to tell if the trend will hold. “Those attacks have fallen off. Those syndicates have to some degree deconstructed,” Inglis said at an event hosted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. “I think it’s a fair bet they have self-deconstructed and essentially gone cold and quiet to see whether the storm will blow over and whether they can then come back.” Whether they do so will depend largely on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin takes steps to undo the “permissive” atmosphere after U.S. President Joe Biden warned him repeatedly about ransomware attacks originating from his country. “It’s too soon to say we’re out of the woods on this,” Inglis said. The FBI blamed Russian ransomware gang REvil for […]

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Russian cybercrime continues as government-backed attacks on companies dwindle, CrowdStrike says

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The Russian approach to hacking shifted considerably over the past year, with state-sponsored attacks on commercial organizations dropping off even as the local cybercrime scene dominated the field, CrowdStrike said in a report Wednesday. From July 2020 to June of this year, Russian state-backed hacking outfits accounted for only a tiny sliver of nation-sponsored attacks aimed at commercial enterprises detected by the cyber firm’s threat hunting service, at 1% compared to China’s 69%. (The figure represents the findings from only one threat intelligence firm, and does not account for hacking campaigns that CrowdStrike might have missed.) Meanwhile, the suspected Russia-based hacking group that CrowdStrike calls Wizard Spider, and that has used the Ryuk ransomware since 2018, was responsible for double the number of detected attempted intrusions of any other cybercrime gang over the same period. While CrowdStrike didn’t have comparison figures on the percentages of state-sponsored attacks on commercial organizations […]

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White House rolls out pipeline, supply chain security initiatives as companies pledge billions in cyber spending

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The Biden administration on Wednesday announced initiatives to bolster supply chain and natural gas pipeline security, following a White House private sector cybersecurity summit where major companies pledged billions of dollars in cyber spending. The National Institute of Standards and Technology will collaborate with industry to develop guidelines for building secure technology, in the first of two administration initiatives. In the other, the administration formally expanded its industrial control systems cybersecurity initiative — under which 150 electric utilities agreed to deploy control system security tech — to natural gas pipelines. Tech giants, insurance companies and educational organizations exit the summit with cybersecurity commitments large and small. Among those vowing the biggest dedication of dollars: Microsoft announced $20 billion over five years to integrate “cybersecurity by design,” which means incorporating security into products as they’re being built, while Google announced $10 billion over the same period to expand “zero trust” programs, […]

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Apple, JPMorgan Chase bosses among industry heads set to gather at White House for cyber ‘call to action’

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President Joe Biden will huddle Wednesday with industry leaders to issue a “call to action” on cybersecurity and make “concrete announcements” to counter the fundamental causes of cyberattacks, according to a senior administration official. It’s a star-studded afternoon gathering scheduled to include the likes of Apple CEO Tim Cook and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon from the financial, technology, energy, insurance and education sectors, then feature discussions led by top administration officials. The White House has been working to secure commitments from industry in advance of the meeting, mostly in the areas of “technology and talent,” the official said in a background call with reporters on Tuesday. Two points of emphasis, the official said, are building technology that is secure from the outset, and better defending critical infrastructure after the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline led to a fuel scare. “We need to bake in security by design into tech,” […]

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Federal agencies are failing to protect sensitive data, Senate report finds

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Of eight federal agencies audited for their cybersecurity programs, only the Department of Homeland Security showed improvements in 2020, according to a report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Released by the panel on Tuesday, the report expresses concerns about the state of federal agencies’ cyber posture during an overall 8% rise in security incidents across agencies. The report underscores the increased scrutiny of federal cybersecurity by lawmakers in the aftermath of a months-long alleged Russian cyber-espionage campaign the private sector first uncovered uncovered in December 2020. Russian hackers used a flaw in network management software SolarWinds to infiltrate nine government agencies. The report found that seven of the eight agencies reviewed still use legacy systems that no longer have security updates supported by their vendor. The practice can leave agencies vulnerable to foreign hacking, the report notes. “It is clear that the data entrusted to these […]

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Biden says ‘shooting war’ could break out with foreign heavyweights over cyberattacks

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The U.S. is “more likely” to end up in a “real shooting war with a major power” over a cyber incident than other kinds of conflict, President Joe Biden suggested on Tuesday. “We’ve seen how cyber threats, including ransomware attacks, increasingly are able to cause damage and disruption to the real world,” he said at a speech at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia. “And it’s increasing exponentially — the capabilities.” While Biden delivered his speech before intelligence personnel, at least one of his intended recipients appeared to be Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Biden administration has been talking tough about Russia providing safe haven for ransomware gangs believed to be responsible for headline-making attacks on Colonial Pipeline, JBS and Kaseya. Biden has pressed that message to Putin directly as recently as July. Russia has rejected U.S. suggestions of wrongdoing. “I can’t […]

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Biden says he gave Putin list of 16 sectors that should be off limits to hacking

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President Joe Biden said he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, from energy to water, that should not be the subject of malicious cyber activity during a meeting between the two men in Geneva on Wednesday. The two heads of state also agreed to task cybersecurity experts from each government “to work on specific understandings about what’s off limits and to follow up on specific [cyber incidents] that originate in either of our countries,” Biden said at press conference after a roughly four-hour meeting with Putin. “I talked about the proposition that certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to attack, period, by cyber or any other means,” Biden said. It was not immediately clear if the list of critical infrastructure sectors that Biden referenced corresponds with the 16 sectors designated by the U.S. government. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to […]

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