Category Archives: State Department

Executive order creates system for ‘automatic’ sanctions on foreigners interfering with U.S. elections

Posted on by

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against foreign individual, entity or country attempting to interfere in U.S. elections, the White House announced Wednesday. The order is not public yet, so the exact details remain unknown. The text was outlined by the White House in a phone call with reporters on Wednesday morning. Some sanctions would be “automatic” in cases where federal investigators identify meddling, White House officials said. “It’s a further effort among several that the administration has made,” national security adviser John Bolton said. “It includes not just interference against election or campaign infrastructure, but it also covers the distribution of propaganda and disinformation.” The executive order requires the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to make regular assessments about potential foreign interference in the election. It also asks for reports by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security in cases interference with election […]

The post Executive order creates system for ‘automatic’ sanctions on foreigners interfering with U.S. elections appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Executive order creates system for ‘automatic’ sanctions on foreigners interfering with U.S. elections→

Senators want answers on State Department’s glaring cybersecurity gaps

Posted on by

The State Department must do more to shore up its cybersecurity posture, according to a bipartisan group of senators. The department is woefully behind on hitting various federal cybersecurity benchmarks, and it is weak on basic measures to protect against phishing, hacks and other cyberattacks, wrote Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Cory Gardner, R-Colo., Ed Markey, D-Mass., Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., in a letter to Secretary Mike Pompeo. The letter cites two recent reports: The department’s inspector general found last year that 33 percent of diplomatic missions failed to conduct even the most basic cyberthreat management practices, like regular reviews and audits. Also, the General Services Administration found that the department has only instituted enhanced access controls on 11 percent of agency devices. The Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act requires agencies to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) for elevated privileged accounts. “We urge you to improve compliance by enabling more secure authentication mechanisms across […]

The post Senators want answers on State Department’s glaring cybersecurity gaps appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Senators want answers on State Department’s glaring cybersecurity gaps→

Top State Department cyber official ‘optimistic’ of deal with Russia, China

Posted on by

The State Department’s top cybersecurity official says he is “optimistic” the United States can strike a deal on norms for government behavior in cyberspace with China and Russia, two of Washington’s biggest adversaries in the domain. Despite myriad grievances with the Russian and Chinese governments over their hacking operations, Robert Strayer said there is ample precedent for a new agreement involving the three cyber powers. “I think that it is possible because we have had three successful processes at the [United Nations] that have established that international law applies to cyberspace just like it does in the real world,” Strayer, a deputy assistant secretary of State, said in an interview. “All of those successful, consensus-based documents required that the U.S., China, and Russia came to agreement on the terms.” Despite that history, the latest round of talks at the UN forum, known as the Group of Governmental Experts, collapsed in […]

The post Top State Department cyber official ‘optimistic’ of deal with Russia, China appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Top State Department cyber official ‘optimistic’ of deal with Russia, China→

The latest attempt by the State Department to set behavior norms

Posted on by

Following lawmakers’ calls for the Trump administration to lay out a clear cyber deterrence strategy, the State Department has proposed developing a broader set of consequences that the government can impose on adversaries to ward off cyberattacks. The unclassified version of the State Department’s deterrence recommendations, published Thursday, calls for the U.S. to work with allies to inflict “swift, costly, and transparent consequences” on foreign governments that use “significant” malicious cyber activity to harm U.S. interests. To do that, the U.S. government needs to clearly and publicly outline the malicious activity it seeks to deter, according to the State Department report, which was required by a 2017 White House executive order. The document doesn’t go into detail on deterrence tools, but U.S. officials have said that sanctions, indictments, publicly attributing attacks, and covert offensive operations are all on the table. Dating back to the Obama administration, lawmakers have urged the executive branch to delineate a […]

The post The latest attempt by the State Department to set behavior norms appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading The latest attempt by the State Department to set behavior norms→

With White House coordinator gone, DHS official calls for U.S. leadership on cybersecurity

Posted on by

In the wake of the White House’s decision to eliminate its top cybersecurity position, a Department of Homeland Security official has called on the U.S. government to robustly engage on cyber policy issues on the world stage. The Trump administration should have a “strong voice” at internet standards bodies and other global forums, working with allies and non-allies alike, said Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for DHS’s Office of Cybersecurity and Communications. “We have to figure out a way to continue to work together to ensure that the stability of the global system is maintained,” Manfra said Tuesday at the Security Through Innovation Summit, presented by McAfee and produced by CyberScoop. Manfra did not mention the recently-nixed White House cybersecurity coordinator in her remarks, but that position has traditionally been key to the United States’ international cybersecurity work. At a February conference in Germany, for example, then-White House cybersecurity coordinator Rob […]

The post With White House coordinator gone, DHS official calls for U.S. leadership on cybersecurity appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading With White House coordinator gone, DHS official calls for U.S. leadership on cybersecurity→

House panel advances State Department bug bounty bill

Posted on by

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday advanced a bill that would establish a bug bounty program at the State Department, the latest effort by lawmakers and security gurus to encourage agencies to use ethical hackers to secure their networks. The Hack Your State Department Act would task the Secretary of State with setting up a vulnerability disclosure process for researchers to hunt for and disclose flaws in the department’s public-facing websites and applications. The program, which would emulate the Hack the Pentagon project the Defense Department carried out in 2016, would pay researchers for finding vulnerabilities of which State officials were unaware. “Any agency or private sector company should have an independent way of testing security,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., the bill’s sponsor, told CyberScoop. “This is one of the ways to do it – get an independent check on the strength of the cybersecurity system.” “A lot of these […]

The post House panel advances State Department bug bounty bill appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading House panel advances State Department bug bounty bill→

The uphill battle to relaunch State Department’s cybersecurity policy office

Posted on by

Be it through legislation or some internal decree, restoring the State Department’s cybersecurity policy office to a prominent place in the agency can’t come soon enough for advocates of U.S. digital diplomacy. Analysts and former government officials say U.S. leadership in shaping international behavior in cyberspace has stalled at a time when nation-state hacking groups are flexing their muscles. “I worry about a gap that leaves allies wondering and adversaries savoring the chance to take advantage of the perceived lack of U.S. leadership,” Christopher Painter, State’s former cybersecurity coordinator, told CyberScoop. “When you have diminished resources [and] when you have uncertainty, inevitably that causes some loss of momentum.” In the eight months since former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he would downgrade the department’s cybersecurity office, the United States has blamed North Korea for the destructive WannaCry ransomware attack, indicted Iranian hackers for terabytes worth of intellectual property theft, and […]

The post The uphill battle to relaunch State Department’s cybersecurity policy office appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading The uphill battle to relaunch State Department’s cybersecurity policy office→

State Department to double cyber defense aid to Ukraine

Posted on by

The State Department will double the cyber defense aid it pledged to Ukraine last year to $10 million in an effort to bolster the security of an ally in the crosshairs of alleged Russian hackers, according to department spokesperson. Wess Mitchell, the assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, made the announcement Wednesday after meeting with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “The threat from Russia is real,” Nauert tweeted. “Our commitment to Ukraine is unbending.” A different department spokesperson declined to comment when CyberScoop asked how the new money will be used. The two countries held their first bilateral cybersecurity dialogue in Kiev in September, at which the United States announced $5 million in new cybersecurity assistance to “strengthen Ukraine’s ability to prevent, mitigate, and respond to cyberattacks.” The Ukrainian power grid has been a ripe target for hackers, who carried out advanced […]

The post State Department to double cyber defense aid to Ukraine appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading State Department to double cyber defense aid to Ukraine→

Hand over your social media history before you enter the US

Posted on by

The US Government will request 5 years’ worth of social media details for 14 million visa applicants, if this proposal goes into effect. Continue reading Hand over your social media history before you enter the US→