Category Archives: Senate intel committee

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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Russian hackers targeted 21 states before 2016 election, FBI still investigating

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Government officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigations said Wednesday that election officials and systems in a total of 21 states were targeted by Russian hackers in the months preceding the 2016 presidential election. “We have evidence of election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted,” said Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications at the DHS’s National Protection and Programs Directorate. The disclosure was made for the first time during a hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence focused on Russian interference in the U.S. election. Manfra did not name the individual states which were targeted and also did not further explain the contextual definition of “targeted” in this context. She also did not say how many of the targeted states were ultimately hacked and if, for example, any data was exfiltrated in these select incidents. The “owners” of targeted […]

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Rudy Giuliani is helping draw up cyber doctrine, DNI says, but details are scarce

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Donald Trump confidant and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is one of the leading voices in designing a “cyber doctrine” for the U.S., according to the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, but there is little information about how that process is going. The long-awaited doctrine — a broadly defined framework that lawmakers hope will one day serve to define the nation’s boundaries in cyberspace and rules of engagement — has been a consistent albeit vague talking point on Capitol Hill for the last year. Senior Republicans — including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain of Arizona — have called on colleagues and the executive branch to develop policy that establishes a clear “red line” for when the U.S. will aggressively respond to specific cyber incidents. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday concerning “worldwide threats” — a conversation that included an overview of cyber conflicts between the […]

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Congress is about to have a really challenging year on cybersecurity

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It will be a banner year for cybersecurity debates in Congress — and that isn’t necessarily a good thing, says Michael Bahar, the staff director of the House Intelligence Committee. “We have kicked off the year with a lot going wrong with Russia and its hacking,” he says. While there are multiple probes in the […]

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