Category Archives: Mark Warner

FTC pushed from Hill on hacking of smart toys, kids’ privacy

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Federal cybersecurity and privacy protections for children are not keeping up with the burgeoning data collection engaged in by “smart” toys and online games, Sen. Mark Warner said Monday, asking the Federal Trade Commission if the law needs to be changed. In a letter to acting FTC Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen, the senator says he’s concerned the agency is soft-pedaling the dangers the Internet of Things might pose for children, citing a speech she gave earlier this year. “Reports of your statements casting these risks as merely speculative — and dismissing consumer harms that don’t pose “monetary injury or unwarranted health and safety risks” — only deepen my concerns,” the Virginia Democrat wrote. He cites the recent example of CloudPets, a product from Spiral Toys that’s marketed as “a message you can hug.” The company turned out to be storing users’ personal data in an insecure, public-facing online database — reportedly exposing over 800,000 customer logins and passwords and more than 2 million voice recordings […]

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Sen. Warner wants action on WannaCry patching from DHS, OMB

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Democratic Sen. Mark Warner has written to federal officials asking for details about how agencies patched their systems to protect them against the fast-spreading WannaCry ransomware. White House homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert told reporters during the daily briefing Monday that no federal systems had been infected, but Warner noted in his letter that despite a National Institute of Standards and Technology recommendation that security-related software updates “be installed within a defined timeframe (in many cases seven to 30 days for critical patches),” the Government Accountability Office last year found “numerous instances where agencies failed to comply with those deadlines.” Microsoft included a fix for the vulnerability in a regularly scheduled patch in mid-March. Over the weekend, the company took the unprecedented step of releasing a patch for several discontinued but still widely used software products, including Windows XP. In the letter, released Monday afternoon, the Virginia senator asks Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Office of […]

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Sen. Warner wants action on WannaCry patching from DHS, OMB

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Democratic Sen. Mark Warner has written to federal officials asking for details about how agencies patched their systems to protect them against the fast-spreading WannaCry ransomware. White House homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert told reporters during the daily briefing Monday that no federal systems had been infected, but Warner noted in his letter that despite a National Institute of Standards and Technology recommendation that security-related software updates “be installed within a defined timeframe (in many cases seven to 30 days for critical patches),” the Government Accountability Office last year found “numerous instances where agencies failed to comply with those deadlines.” Microsoft included a fix for the vulnerability in a regularly scheduled patch in mid-March. Over the weekend, the company took the unprecedented step of releasing a patch for several discontinued but still widely used software products, including Windows XP. In the letter, released Monday afternoon, the Virginia senator asks Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Office of […]

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Bill would launch cybersecurity grant program for state and local governments

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Proposed legislation establishing a Department of Homeland Security grant program that would bolster cybersecurity for state and local government IT networks faces a steep climb in Congress, but its backers say the need is urgent. “There’s an acknowledgement that this is a real problem …[and that] things could get worse … As [former Defense Secretary] Leon Panetta has observed, we’re at something of a pre-9/11 point in cyber,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., a co-sponsor of the State Cyber Resiliency Act, HR 1344. His GOP co-sponsor is Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock. An identical companion bill in the Senate, S. 516, is sponsored by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo. Cyber threats “aren’t aimed at red districts or blue districts — all of our communities are vulnerable … There is an obvious need and I hope that makes it more likely that this bill could move,” Kilmer told CyberScoop in an […]

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