Category Archives: ron wyden

Lawmakers back CISA chief Krebs after report that he expects to be fired

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Multiple Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Thursday reacted with concern to a media report that a senior Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity official has told associates that he expects to be fired by the White House. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were among those who hailed the work of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Director Chris Krebs, who has been at the forefront of federal agencies’ efforts to protect the 2020 election from hacking and disinformation. “It would not be a surprise [but] would disappoint me profoundly if he were to be fired,” Langevin, who is co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said in an interview. “I think Chris Krebs has served in his role as director of CISA with great professionalism, with passion, in a nonpartisan way. He’s someone who is respected on both sides of the aisle.” Krebs, […]

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Trump administration urged to sanction Russian individuals and groups for election meddling

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A group of Democratic senators is urging the U.S. Treasury Department to impose sanctions on those involved in efforts to interfere in the 2020 elections so far, including those from Russia. “We write to urge you immediately to impose sanctions on individuals, entities and governmental actors seeking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections,” the 11 lawmakers, including Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, wrote in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Congress mandated a broad range of sanctions tools, and it is long past time for the administration to send a direct message to President Putin: the U.S. will respond immediately and forcefully to continuing election interference by the government of the Russian Federation and its surrogates, to punish, deter and substantially increase the economic and political costs of such interference.” The U.S. intelligence community has assessed Russia is currently working to “publicly denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to a statement the Office […]

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Trump administration urged to sanction Russian individuals and groups for election meddling

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A group of Democratic senators is urging the U.S. Treasury Department to impose sanctions on those involved in efforts to interfere in the 2020 elections so far, including those from Russia. “We write to urge you immediately to impose sanctions on individuals, entities and governmental actors seeking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. elections,” the 11 lawmakers, including Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner, wrote in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Congress mandated a broad range of sanctions tools, and it is long past time for the administration to send a direct message to President Putin: the U.S. will respond immediately and forcefully to continuing election interference by the government of the Russian Federation and its surrogates, to punish, deter and substantially increase the economic and political costs of such interference.” The U.S. intelligence community has assessed Russia is currently working to “publicly denigrate” Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, according to a statement the Office […]

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Democrats furious after intelligence officials cancel in-person election security briefings

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The Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday said it would provide election-security information to Congress through written materials rather than in-person briefings, sparking outrage among Democrats just two months before the presidential election. In letters to the House and Senate intelligence committees, among others, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said his office would provide lawmakers with “written finished intelligence products” on foreign threats to the election to prevent leaks of classified information and ensure the materials aren’t “misunderstood” or “politicized.” The move highlights the partisan fight over election security material as U.S. officials warn that Russia is once again interfering in the electoral process for the benefit of President Donald Trump. After one routine election-security briefing for lawmakers in February in which an intelligence official said Russia had a preference for Trump, the president was reportedly irate that Democrats received the information before he did. Trump […]

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Lawmakers call for FTC investigation of data brokers enabled by online ad industry

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A group of 10 U.S. lawmakers on Friday asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate companies that sell Americans’ personal data by exploiting online advertising, calling for any lawbreaking firms to be shut down. The lawmakers, including Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Bill Cassidy, R-La., decried the data-selling practices as an “outrageous privacy violation,” citing reports that Mobilewalla, a data broker, compiled data from Black Lives Matter protestors for marketing purposes. The broader market for consumers’ personal data is lucrative, and includes a bidding process for online ads that include code for gobbling up information on users’ locations and personal devices. The lawmakers want the FTC to use its investigative power to determine if data brokers have broken a federal law that prohibits “unfair and deceptive” business practices. An FTC spokesperson declined to comment. “[T]here is no effective way to control these tools absent intervention by regulators and Congress,” the lawmakers wrote to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons. “Technological […]

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Around 130 Twitter accounts targeted in bitcoin scam hack, company says

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Hackers who breached Twitter accounts belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, rapper Kanye West and other high profile users had targeted roughly 130 accounts, only taking over a small number, the company said. Attackers gained access to “a small subset” of the 130 accounts on which they initially focused, gaining control and sending tweets in their name, Twitter said in an update Thursday. By impersonating influential users like former president Barack Obama, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the hackers urged millions of followers to send bitcoin to the same address as part of a scam that netted more than $110,000. While Twitter has since removed all of the tweets, the incident marked a major breach for the social media site, resulting in questions about its ability to safeguard accounts belonging to influential newsmakers. It’s also led to suggestions that the attackers would have had access to […]

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Wyden seeks details on spies’ data protection after scathing CIA audit on Vault 7 leaks

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A senator with insight into the way U.S. intelligence agencies conduct espionage wants to know if American spies are protecting their secrets in a way that prevents intruders from stealing information that’s crucial to national security. In a letter sent Tuesday to the director of national intelligence, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked for more information about what he described as “widespread security problems across the intelligence community.”  Wyden was referencing, in part, an internal Central Intelligence Agency audit that described “longstanding imbalances and lapses” in data protection before WikiLeaks published secret U.S. hacking tools, known as the Vault 7 files, starting in 2017. The October 2017 audit encouraged the CIA to view the audit’s findings as “a wake-up call” and “an opportunity” to “reorient how we view risk.” Now, Wyden is asking Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe about whether known vulnerabilities still exist. The intelligence community “is still lagging […]

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Senators Prod FCC to Act on SIM Swapping

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Crooks have stolen tens of millions of dollars and other valuable commodities from thousands of consumers via “SIM swapping,” a particularly invasive form of fraud that involves tricking a target’s mobile carrier into transferring someone’s wireless service to a device they control. But the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the entity responsible for overseeing wireless industry practices, has so far remained largely silent on the matter. Now, a cadre of Senate lawmakers is demanding to know what, if anything, the agency might be doing to track and combat SIM swapping. Continue reading Senators Prod FCC to Act on SIM Swapping→

In letter to senators, Amazon’s Ring defends cybersecurity policies

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After a series of security incidents involving products made by Amazon-owned Ring, the home security company is making the case to U.S. senators that its cybersecurity policies are robust. In a letter to lawmakers this week, which CyberScoop obtained, Ring said it regularly does penetration testing and source code reviews of its products, and that it encrypts the video captured by its cameras. “Like any rapidly growing company, we recognize that we must continually evolve and enhance our data and security practices to block efforts by bad actors,” Brian Huseman, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, wrote in the letter to five Senate Democrats. The company said it now “proactively monitors” for customer credentials sucked up in third-party breaches, and recently began prompting users to set up two-factor authentication on their accounts to make it harder for hackers to compromise them. The senators — Chris Coons of Connecticut; Ed Markey of […]

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