Category Archives: Mark Warner

Senators worry that new D.C. Metro railcars could carry cyber risk

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Senators who represent the Washington, D.C., area have raised concerns about added cybersecurity risks in the region’s Metro system after reports that a Chinese state-owned manufacturing company could win a $1 billion procurement for railcars. The four Democrats – Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland – wrote to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority expressing their “serious concerns” of possible foreign bidding on the project, “particularly when it could involve foreign governments that have explicitly sought to undermine our country’s economic competitiveness and national security.” The Jan. 18 letter to WMATA CEO Paul J. Wiedefeld, the lawmakers exhorted him to “take the necessary steps to mitigate growing cyber risks to these cars.” The worry is that technology in the transit system, including video surveillance cameras and the automated aspects of railcars, could be a target of spies or hackers. The state-owned China Railway […]

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Senators Call on FCC To Investigate T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint Selling Location Data to Bounty Hunters

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After Motherboard’s article, Senators Kamala Harris, Mark Warner, and Ron Wyden are coming out against telcos who are selling their customers’ location data. Continue reading Senators Call on FCC To Investigate T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint Selling Location Data to Bounty Hunters→

Warner, Rubio introduce bill to protect U.S. from supply chain security issues

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Two senators are trying to create a central government entity to deal with supply chain security and strategize over how to keep U.S. technologies safe from foreign theft in a bill introduced on Friday. The bill, from Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. and Mark Warner, D-Va., seeks to create a White House Office of Critical Technologies and Security. The new entity would take the lead in strategizing and coordinating across agencies to “protect against state-sponsored technology theft and risks to critical supply chains.” The proposed bill comes as the government increases pressure on China for allegedly using its corporate presence and workers in the U.S. to steal intellectual property. The Justice Department in December unsealed indictments against two Chinese citizens for allegedly spying on dozens of U.S. companies and agencies by hacking managed service providers. The White House is also weighing a ban on American companies’ use of technology bought from […]

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Russian disinformation ops were bigger than we thought

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Through a flurry of social media posts ahead of the 2016 U.S. election, Russian trolls sought to deter African-Americans from voting, according to a report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The Internet Research Agency, a social-media propaganda machine based in St. Petersburg, Russia, encouraged African-American voters to boycott the 2016 election or follow incorrect voting procedures, according to the report by researchers from the University of Oxford and social-media analysis company Graphika. The broader Russian propaganda operation, which continues to this day, has also leaned more heavily on Instagram to sow discord that was previously understood, according to a second report prepared for the committee by private researchers from New Knowledge, Columbia University, and Canfield Research LLC. The reports, released Monday by the committee, represent the most comprehensive independent analyses of the Russian disinformation efforts. They show how, through hundreds of millions of interactions on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, the IRA looked for every opportunity […]

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Sen. Warner calls for a ‘whole-of-society’ U.S. cyber doctrine

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Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election laid bare the vulnerabilities in American society and institutions to hacking and information operations. Two years later, policymakers are still searching for a comprehensive strategy for dealing with those vulnerabilities. In a speech Friday, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, proposed a “whole-of-society” cyber doctrine rather than one that treats the cybersecurity challenges in government and private sector separately. “It’s not enough to simply improve the security of our infrastructure, computer systems, and data,” Warner said at the Center for New American Security in Washington, D.C. “We must also deal with adversaries who are using American technologies to exploit our freedom, our openness, and basically attack our most important asset — our democracy.” Warner called on the U.S. to redouble its pursuit of global cyber norms; social-media companies to do more to combat disinformation; the Pentagon […]

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Facebook, Twitter remove hundreds of accounts tied to ‘coordinated influence’ campaign

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Facebook and Twitter announced late Tuesday that hundreds of accounts tied to an influence operation have been removed, part of the companies’ heightened efforts to remove bad actors from the social media networks. In a blog post, Facebook announced it had removed 652 pages, groups and accounts for what the company calls “coordinated inauthentic behavior.” The accounts were linked to a group known as “Liberty Front Press,” an effort that originated in Iran. Working with cybersecurity firm FireEye, Facebook discovered the group was primarily posting political content focused on the Middle East, as well as the U.K., U.S., and Latin America. Beginning in 2017, its focus on the U.K. and U.S. increased. “The activity we have uncovered highlights that multiple actors continue to engage in and experiment with online, social media-driven influence operations as a means of shaping political discourse,” an assessment from FireEye read. “The activity we have uncovered highlights that […]

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Russian hackers targeted 2018 reelection campaign of vulnerable Democrat

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The same outfit of Russian hackers that launched cyberattacks against U.S. targets in the 2016 presidential election appears to have targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill, a critic of Moscow and red-state Democrat who faces a tough reelection bid. The news, first reported by the Daily Beast, makes the Missouri senator the first to be named in 2018 as a target of Russian hackers. There are at least two others. Last week, Microsoft executive Tom Burt said that earlier this year, hackers associated with the GRU, the Russian intelligence agency behind cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns during the 2016 presidential election, used spearphishing and fake Microsoft domains to target three candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. Burt said that the unnamed candidates “might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint as well as from an election standpoint.” McCaskill fits the bill on both counts. She serves as the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Government […]

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DOJ regrets the error on OPM-linked fraud case

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The Department of Justice has apologized for confusion over its announcement last month that a fraudster used information stolen in the infamous 2015 Office of Personnel Management breach — an episode that confounded lawmakers and ran counter to publicly available information on the breach. The confusion began after DOJ announced on June 18 that a Maryland woman had pleaded guilty to using stolen OPM data to get car and personal loans. The public assumption had been – and still is – that Chinese hackers had stolen the data for espionage purposes. But DOJ now says that it hasn’t yet determined whether the woman and her accomplice got the data from the OPM breach or somewhere else. After an internal review, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia appended a statement to its press release saying that “numerous victims” of the fraud self-identified as victims of the OPM breach. “The government […]

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Lawmakers demand answers in wake of strange OPM identity fraud lawsuit

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With mystery swirling around an identity theft case where prosecutors have claimed the perpetrators used personal information included in the Office of Personnel Management breach, two lawmakers are pushing the government for more information. A pair of letters sent this week by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., to the heads of the Department of Justice and OPM issues a number of questions about the alleged identity fraud charges. The Virginia lawmakers are especially interested in learning how the defendants acquired the data. On June 18, the Eastern District of Virginia announced that a Maryland woman had pleaded guilty to identity theft charges. That press release initially said the data used in that crime was from the OPM breach. On June 21, the district issued a correction to their press release, stripping any mention of the breach. Virginia is home to the single largest population of federal […]

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Senate to review fusion center plan to deter Russian cyberattacks

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Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Wednesday they would consider plans offered by a Obama administration official to fight back against Russian aggression in cyberspace. Victoria Nuland, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told lawmakers that it would be pragmatic for the country to consider a new “fusion center” to deter foreign election meddling similar to what occurred in 2016. The approach Nuland described would look like the counter-terrorism model pursued by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “On the President’s direction and with Congressional support, the Trump Administration could immediately establish a multi-agency Fusion Center, modeled on the National Counter Terrorism Center [(NCTC)] but smaller in size, to pull together all the information and resources of our government to identify, expose and respond to state-sponsored efforts to undermine American democracy through disinformation, cyberattack, and abuse of the internet,” Nuland said. Senior […]

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