Category Archives: State Department

White House pushing for research carveout in GDPR

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The White House is hoping to convince European regulators to protect security researchers in their General Data Protection Regulation so they can continue to scrape data that’s relevant for data breach and botnet investigations, according to White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Rob Joyce. GDPR, which mandates companies with European customers to have numerous data protections in place, goes into effect May 25, 2018. The law will have a significant impact on the billion dollar cybersecurity industry, but some of its privacy provisions could have a negative effect on security researchers’ work. One of the more concerning developments revolves around access to data published by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Whenever a domain name is registered, ICANN requires information like, a name, IP address and physical address to be submitted. While these details are sometimes forged, that information can provide clues about a cyberattack. ICANN stores all of […]

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Hoping to fill a global void, private companies push for ‘cyber norms’

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Technology companies are increasingly joining together to develop and promote the adoption of international “norms” and other rules for cyberspace, hoping to fill a void left by governments and international institutions that have failed to act. The latest example of the dynamic came last week when a prominent group of corporations, including Siemens, Airbus and microchip maker DXP, announced a new nine-member cybersecurity charter. The document — essentially a nonbinding agreement to work to improve global cybersecurity — is currently open for other companies to join, one member said. “Cybersecurity is and has to be more than a seatbelt or an airbag here; it’s a factor that’s crucial to the success of the digital economy,” reads a statement on the charter’s website. “People and organizations need to trust that their digital technologies are safe and secure; otherwise they won’t embrace the digital transformation. That’s why we are signing together a Charter of Trust […]

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Rex Tillerson proposes new ‘cyber bureau’ at the State Department

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has a plan to create a new “cyber bureau” within the State Department that would focus on building relationships with foreign governments to coordinate on international cybersecurity priorities, according to a letter sent Tuesday to the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The proposition first surfaced publicly during a committee hearing Tuesday on the state of U.S. cyber diplomacy. Former State Department Cybersecurity Coordinator Christopher Painter and former Pentagon cybersecurity adviser Michael Sulmeyer criticized Tillerson for shuttering one such office, which Painter previously oversaw, last year during a myriad other cuts. “The Department of State must be organized to lead diplomatic efforts related to all aspects of cyberspace,” says Tillerson’s letter to committee Chairman Edward Royce, R-Calif. Since Tillerson took the helm, the State Department’s cyber diplomacy mission had been consolidated and wrapped into the Bureau of Economic Affairs’ Office of International Communications and Information Policy. The decision was […]

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Cyber diplomacy office at State Department would return under House-passed bill

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With the passage of the Cyber Diplomacy Act in the House of Representatives, Congress took the first step Wednesday in reestablishing a State Department office that was dedicated to developing global norms for digital espionage and more. The bipartisan bill, which passed by voice vote, has garnered support from both sides of the aisle. It would codify and expand the capabilities of the Office of the Cybersecurity Coordinator, which was created in 2011 but abolished last year after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson decided to merge it with the department’s larger Bureau of Economic Affairs. Senators have shown interest in the idea of reestablishing the office, but it’s unclear if the House bill will move in that chamber. Insiders say the shuttering of the cyber office effectively downgraded the State Department’s diplomatic mission for the development of norms for cyberspace — including, for example, debating foreign governments on what should be considered a legitimate target […]

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State Department’s top cyber diplomat announces departure

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Chris Painter, the State Department’s lead cyber diplomat for the past six years, is leaving at the end of this month. Painter, who was first appointed as the department’s coordinator for cyber issues by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011,  led the United States’ cybersecurity diplomatic efforts, including representing the U.S. in bilateral meetings around the globe. Last month, he traveled to Israel to announce a cyber domain partnership between Israel and the United States. He’s worked to promote international cyber norms and represented the State Department on sensitive operations and responses to international threats. Prior to his work in the State Department, he worked in the White House for two years as the senior director for cybersecurity at the National Security Council. That was preceded by 19 years at the Department of Justice under Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. Painter served during an epochal […]

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Trump Organization falls victim to supply chain hack

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The Trump organization has fallen victim to yet another leak of customer data tied to 14 of its properties around the world, including New York, Vancouver and Washington, D.C., among others. Through a data breach of Sabre Hospitality Solutions, the chain’s reservation management service provider, credit card thieves had access to up to 15 percent of daily reservation data at the 14 properties over a seven-month period from August 2016 to March 2017, according to separate letters posted on the Trump Organization and Sabre websites. An “unauthorized party was able to access payment card information for some hotel reservations … including cardholder name, payment card number, card expiration date, and potentially card security code,” the Trump Organization said in a statement. “In some cases, the unauthorized party also was able to access guest name, email, phone number, address, and other information.” Sabre Hospitality Solutions, who provide reservation services to multiple large […]

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For now, many conversations about global ‘cyber norms’ start with Beijing

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China’s government is taking steps to become an international leader in discussions concerning “cyber norms,” a formal but still vague understanding about the appropriate behavior between states regarding offensive cyber operations. Chinese leaders signed one such agreement Friday with Canada, marking Beijing’s sixth deal in two years. The first was with the Obama administration in late 2015. It curbed some cyber-enabled economic espionage by the Chinese against American companies. China is promising to end state-sponsored cyberattacks aimed at Canada’s high-tech private sector, curtailing the practice of stealing Canadian trade secrets. Beijing has now come to similar terms with the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia — four of the Five Eye nations — in addition to Russia and Brazil. In similar fashion to China’s other international cybersecurity agreements, this deal is non-binding, unenforceable in nature and only covers economic espionage. It outlines no punishment mechanism in case either China or Canada were to break the agreement. The accord […]

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Experts warn Congress of the return of Chinese IP theft

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Hackers working for the Chinese government again appear to be conducting economic espionage against private U.S. companies and other American organizations, experts told lawmakers Tuesday during an open Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing. Cybersecurity experts have stated that Chinese cyber espionage operations — hacking activities aimed at stealing trade secrets, intellectual property or other confidential business information — has substantially declined in the wake of an agreement struck between former President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2015. But at least “anecdotally,” there has been a re-emergence of related economic espionage by Chinese hackers aimed at U.S. entities, according to Samantha Ravich, a current senior adviser to D.C.-based think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Over the last year, the FDD has established a team to study what it defines as “economic warfare.” “It seems there was a dip at first but the anecdotes that are […]

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U.S. sends diplomats into info battles unarmed, experts say

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In the fight against Russian misinformation campaigns, U.S. diplomats are hamstrung by outdated laws and rules, and they are technologically ill-equipped for battle, a State Department advisory panel was told Tuesday. “We’re sending our [information] soldiers into battle without weapons, essentially … It’s simply unacceptable,” former senior State Department official Tom Cochran told the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which published a report on the future of U.S. efforts abroad to combat technologically and hacking-enabled information operations like the one against the 2016 presidential election. Copies of “Can Public Diplomacy Survive the Internet? – Bots, Echo Chambers and Disinformation,” were distributed at the meeting and digitally afterwards, but the report was still unavailable on the State Department website as of early Tuesday evening. “There’s a lot that we should be able to do [with technology] … in a very white hat kind of way that we can’t … because we’re governed by a […]

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