Category Archives: Mark Warner

Lawmaker hopes to draw redline discouraging election cyberattacks

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A prominent lawmaker wants to draw a line in the sand to discourage hackers from targeting U.S. election systems. On Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., suggested that the United States formally declare it will respond in cyberspace to any foreign interference in American elections. Warner, who serves as vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, proposed the idea in an amendment to the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual defense policy bill. Warner’s amendment suggests that the United States alter its cyber doctrine to respond accordingly when and if a foreign adversary launches a cyberattack to undermine U.S. elections. The proposed NDAA for fiscal year 2019 is already a significant departure from former versions. For the first time, it offers clear marching orders to the newly elevated U.S. Cyber Command. The bill also directs U.S. cyber forces to go on the attack in response to cyber […]

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Stalled election security bill is reborn with support from Senate Intelligence Committee

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A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the Senate Intelligence Committee is reintroducing a bill that aims to bolster election cybersecurity. The purpose of the original Secure Elections Act is intact: to facilitate communication between the federal government and the state and local offices that run elections, to expedite security clearances for those officials and to provide financial support for state election infrastructure. Changes include making funding available to local election jurisdictions and create an election security advisory panel, among other things. The new bill retains its five original bipartisan co-sponsors, but notably now includes leaders from the Senate Intelligence Committee — Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who serves as the chair and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who is the vice chair. “Our democracy is under attack by foreign actors who seek to undermine and destabilize our country,” Burr said in a press release. “This bill will help strengthen our cybersecurity heading […]

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Senate Intelligence Committee pushes for improvements to election cybersecurity

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The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday published recommendations to improve election infrastructure cybersecurity as the 2018 election season is set to kick into high gear. The effort comes after numerous reports that Russian-linked entities tried to penetrate election systems in the weeks before the 2016 election. “It is clear the Russian government was looking for vulnerabilities in our election systems, ” Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said. “There is no evidence any vote was changed.” The committee urged its peers to “urgently pass legislation” increasing assistance to states to hire technology staff, update software, contract cybersecurity vendors and conduct security audits. “There were 40 states that were operating with election equipment that was a decade old,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. “Much of that equipment had outdated software you weren’t able to upgrade even if you chose to.” The Senate Intelligence Committee’s number one recommendation is to ensure that states, not the […]

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Cybersecurity policymaking is out of focus. Bureaucracy hackers can help.

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The cybersecurity industry is in desperate need of more “bureaucracy hackers” — individuals within federal and state governments who are authorities on the intricacies of policy creation and the nature of today’s rapidly-evolving technology and threat landscapes. To understand why, look no further than Georgia State Bill 315: Introduced in the Georgia state senate earlier this month, the bill has the entire cybersecurity community shaking its head in disbelief. In short, the bill is modeled after the highly-controversial Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which makes accessing a network or computer without authorization illegal – even if there is no theft or damage. While many parts of the U.S. government are advancing cybersecurity by adopting industry’s best practices, such as allowing security researchers to identify and disclose vulnerabilities that make us all safer, Georgia is closing the door to these folks. Sen. Mark Warner’s IOT Improvement Act is another clear example: Drafted […]

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Amid data breach crisis, SEC head tells Congress he doesn’t know much

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Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Jay Clayton told a panel of Senators on Tuesday that an investigation into his agency’s recently revealed data breach is ongoing and that he is looking to hire additional staff to help protect the agency’s network and data. Sitting before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, Clayton fielded questions about the SEC breach as well as the Equifax breach, which occurred last month. In a lengthy written statement released last week, Clayton said that the SEC detected a breach into its EDGAR system in 2016. The database houses corporate disclosures that are not always immediately available to the public, meaning it could be used for insider trading. Clayton told the committee that the breach was made possible by a defect in a custom piece of software used by the independent regulator. While an exact timeline of the breach is unclear, a fix was pushed […]

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Senators introduce bipartisan bill to improve Internet of Things cybersecurity

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A new bill introduced in the Senate Tuesday by Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., would establish a new set of cybersecurity standards for companies that hope to sell so-called “Internet of Things” devices to federal agencies. Inconspicuously named the “Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017,” the legislation mandates that any IoT product sold to the government must be able to receive software patches in case of a discovered vulnerability. In addition, the bill calls for manufacturers to discontinue the practice of hard-coding passwords into the firmware of devices — a process which is already condemned by security experts. Typically, a hard-coded password is hidden from the user and is intended for the manufacturer’s use only. But hackers have taken advantage of hardcoded passwords to break into IoT devices and incorporate them into distributed denial of service attacks. Notably, the bill also encourages curious researchers to […]

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New Bill Seeks Basic IoT Security Standards

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Lawmakers in the U.S. Senate today introduced a bill that would set baseline security standards for the government’s purchase and use of a broad range of Internet-connected devices, including computers, routers and security cameras. The legislation, which also seeks to remedy some widely-perceived shortcomings in existing cybercrime law, was developed in direct response to a series of massive cyber attacks in 2016 that were fueled for the most part by poorly-secured “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices. Continue reading New Bill Seeks Basic IoT Security Standards→

NSA inspector general nominee pledges to investigate contractor leaks, whistleblower protections

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The National Security Agency’s prospective new inspector general testified on Wednesday that he will investigate the intelligence agency’s problem of repeated contractor leaks. Robert Storch, the Justice Department’s deputy inspector general since March 2015, was first nominated in November by then-President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump nominated Storch again in June. Storch would become the NSA’s first independent watchdog. Storch sat before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday, with questions about leaks sandwiched between inquiries about whistleblower protections at the NSA, two intimately related subjects that have moved to the center of the U.S. political universe over the last several years. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked that Storch’s new job quickly turn to the issue of NSA’s security woes. “I want to express a concern I have about NSA,” Feinstein said. “Beginning with [Edward] Snowden, we have had three major thefts of people walking out with classified material. I have spoken to the heads […]

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Top Democrat wants ‘full scope’ of foreign hacking against election systems publicly disclosed

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Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, wants the Department of Homeland Security to publicly disclose “the full scope” of foreign hacking of state and local election systems, the Virginian wrote in a letter today to DHS Secretary John Kelly. The Intelligence panel will hold an open hearing Wednesday on Russian hacking against U.S. targets. Experts from the DHS, FBI, Illinois State Board of Elections, the National Association of State Election Directors and election cybersecurity expert J. Alex Halderman will testify. “While I am not aware of evidence that the 2016 voting process itself was subjected to manipulation, and have no reason to doubt the validity of the election results, we know that the DHS and FBI have confirmed two intrusions into voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois by foreign-based hackers, though no data was modified or deleted.” Warner wrote in a letter to Kelly. “At the same time, there was suspicious activity aimed […]

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