Category Archives: ODNI

FBI director warns of China’s preparations for disruptive infrastructure attacks

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Wray indicated the FBI sees China as a more imminent threat to U.S. infrastructure as hacking groups like Volt Typhoon position resources for disruption ahead of a potential confrontation with the U.S. over Taiwan as early as 2027.

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Spy report: 3.4M warrantless searches of US data under FISA last year

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The 3.4 million searches the ODNI disclosed Friday represent a significant increase from last year.

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Trump administration wants private sector to do more to counter foreign intelligence efforts

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The Trump administration’s counterintelligence strategy, released Monday, aims for stronger collaboration between the intelligence community and the private sector on detecting and stopping foreign intelligence threats to U.S. entities. The plan, which President Donald Trump approved in early January, emphasizes a longstanding government argument that the private sector must do more to prevent foreign espionage. As state-sponsored hackers target more U.S. companies, corporate America should prioritize preparations to stifle similar attacks in the future, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Bill Evanina, told reporters at a briefing Monday. “A hostile nation state attack on a private U.S. company … is a counterintelligence attack on our nation,” he said. The NCSC is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Earlier on Monday the Department of Justice announced charges against four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for allegedly hacking into Equifax to steal information about roughly 147 million Americans. Prosecutors also alleged […]

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State election officials will get fresh intelligence briefing after Iran tensions

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In the wake of the U.S.-Iran standoff and just weeks before the first Democratic primary, the intelligence community’s lead official for election security will brief state officials on the top cyberthreats to the U.S. electoral process. Shelby Pierson, the intelligence community’s election threats executive, said that the briefing this Thursday will cover full gamut of digital threats to U.S. elections, including those emanating from Iran. Asked if Iran is more likely to interfere in the 2020 election after the U.S. military killed Tehran’s top general earlier this month, Pierson told reporters Tuesday that “it certainly is something that we’re prepared for.” “Our adversaries look to the political climate … it wouldn’t surprise me at all that this is part of the calculus,” she added. Pierson, who assumed her post last July, used a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness about digital threats facing the […]

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Blunt phone call shows state officials are unhappy with rollout of election security framework

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Mac Warner needed to get something off his chest. The secretary of state of West Virginia had patiently listened to federal officials explain their updated process for notifying state officials and the public of foreign attempts to interfere in U.S. elections. As the Nov. 8 phone call with election officials across the country came to a close, Warner said he wouldn’t mince words the way one of his “silver-tongued” colleagues had done while offering feedback on the updated process. “The analogy that came to me is the realigning of the deck chairs on the Titanic,” Warner said, according to a call transcript obtained by CyberScoop. “I think this is a straightening up of the chairs: It feels good and so forth, but you’re not getting to the substance.” It was one of multiple blunt exchanges about the new threat-notification framework, which is meant to give U.S. officials a consistent process for alerting state personnel, the private sector, Congress, and […]

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Improve controls on classified information, inspector general tells U.S. intelligence community

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The federal government should do more to protect its most sensitive information from potentially being deleted or leaked by insiders, according to a new report from the intelligence community inspector general (ICIG). The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) must “improve controls to efficiently and effectively manage and mitigate the risk that a trusted privileged user could inappropriately access, modify, destroy, or exfiltrate classified data,” the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, writes in the report. The potential for trouble extends even to classified information that is restricted to a trusted few at the ODNI, the report says. The ICIG’s specific recommendations about how to address the issue, of course, are classified. The semiannual report, released Tuesday, details a number of ongoing intelligence community programs and audits meant to boost the cybersecurity of the ODNI and the intelligence community writ large, among them projects on overhauling the security clearance process and efforts […]

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U.S. officials release framework for notifying public of foreign interference in elections

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The Trump administration on Friday released a framework describing the process by which it would notify Congress, state and local officials, the private sector, and the public about foreign interference in U.S. elections. The framework supplements existing laws, under which the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security alert victims of cyber intrusions and other malicious activity. The document is recognition that, in cases of foreign attempts to disrupt the electoral process, more communication with the public is needed. One key factor in the notification process, according to a one-page summary released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is whether public disclosure of a foreign interference operation will deter the activity and protect the public, or instead re-amplify the adversary’s message. If DHS’s cybersecurity agency or a member of the intelligence community wants to disclose foreign interference activity beyond what is required by law, an interagency group of intelligence officials will […]

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Cybersecurity has done more to drive government cloud use than any other feature, intel official says

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The cybersecurity features built into cloud computing have allowed the CIA to quickly achieve its technological goals, a top U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday. Sue Gordon, principal deputy director of national intelligence, said that of all the improvements that the cloud has brought to the intelligence community, the protections built into the technology provide the trust needed to handle some of the most sensitive work done by the U.S. government. “The advances we’ve made in security are probably what have allowed the greatest movement of mission,” Gordon said Tuesday at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, D.C. “Because of our insistence in the confidence of our processes and our data, and our commitment to the trust the American people place in us, we now have an environment that we trust.” It was a watershed moment for cloud computing when the CIA announced in 2013 that it would […]

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Mueller report confirms Trump lobbied top intel officials to refute Russia stories

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President Donald Trump pushed top intelligence officials to refute information tied to the investigations into links between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, according to information publicly released Thursday in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. According to the report, Trump phoned then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on March 26, 2017 to complain the investigation was “messing up” his ability to get things done with Russia, as far as Rogers recalls. The president also asked Rogers if there was anything he could do to refute news stories linking him to Russia. Richard Ledgett, former NSA deputy director who was reportedly present for the exchange, drafted a memo about the substance of the call. He and Rogers both signed it and locked it in a safe. Ledgett “said it was the most unusual thing he had experienced in 40 years of government service,” the report states. By the time the phone call […]

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Another FBI veteran tapped to lead DNI’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center

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The U.S. intelligence community’s center for analyzing cyberthreat data got a new director Wednesday in Erin Joe, a career FBI official with experience dealing with nation-state-level threats. Joe becomes the second director of the four-year-old Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center at a time when nation-state hacking threats to U.S. organizations have been steady. She most recently served as a senior FBI executive focusing on nation-state hacking and “cyberterrorism” threats, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in announcing her appointment. As part of a 22-year career as an FBI field officer, Joe investigated the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 attacks and led terrorism investigations across the Middle East, according to a biography on the RSA Conference website. CTIIC is a small agency comprised of officials from intelligence, law enforcement, and other agencies whose task is to quickly get cyberthreat intelligence into the hands of federal officials. President Barack […]

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