Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

House Commcerce Committee Vice Chair Yvette Clarke (D-NY) and Rep John Curtis (R-UT) spoke at The Hil event titled "Boundless: Building a 5G World". They touted the potential benefits from emerging 5G technology, but warned that Congress must act quickly in a bipartisan fashion before the US falls behind. "We've got to remember to keep 5G nonpartisan, because the moment it becomes owned by a single party, then that's when it loses,” said Rep Curtis.

The Senate Commerce Committee drilled down on the 5G rollout in a hearing titled "Winning the Race to 5G and the Next Era of Technology Innovation in the United States." It was the first hearing of the committee in the 116th Congress, and the shadow of Chinese tech in US telecom loomed large over the proceedings.

I believe it is no longer enough to be first to 5G—the networks we deploy must also be secure. And to build 5G security effectively, we must build a market for more secure 5G equipment. That means making sure our companies can continue to innovate and encouraging other countries to invest in 5G security, too. This is a big task. As with all significant endeavors, the hard part is where to start. But I have some ideas—about where the Federal Communications Commission should begin.

At State of the Net, much of Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr's speech focused on 5G and on the "real challenge" from China, which he said has deployed 5G at five times the pace of the US -- a timely comment in the midst of the Huawei controversy. He stopped short of promising special consideration for US 5G projects, but he cautioned against establishing policy barriers. "I want to let the private sector compete" without restraints from local government agencies, on topics such as tower deployment, he said.

Desperate for data on its competitors, Facebook  has been secretly paying people to install a “Facebook Research” VPN that lets the company suck in all of a user’s phone and web activity, similar to Facebook’s Onavo Protect app that Apple banned in June and that was removed in August.

An indictment unsealed on Jan 28 claims that telecommunication equipment vendor Huawei stole trade secrets from Bellevue (WA)-based T-Mobile USA and then obstructed justice when T-Mobile threatened to sue Huawei in US District Court in Seattle.

US District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose (CA) has rejected a proposed settlement that would put an end to the years-long lawsuit over the company’s 2016 disclosure that it had been hit by nation-state hackers that exposed hundreds of millions of accounts. Judge Koh, who has presided over many tech-related cases, including the Apple v. Samsung trial, lambasted Yahoo for its lack of transparency over how it has handled the aftermath of the breach.

Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) fired off a letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking to "better understand the shutdown’s toll on our national security," and sought answers on what, if any, cybersecurity risks were posed by the recent, and possibly future, government shutdown(s). "Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was forced to suspend crucial efforts to protect our cybersecurity and infrastructure," said Sen Warner. "Also hindered was the FBI’s ability to conduct cyber investigations.

The paper argues that the current first-to-market approach to connected technologies -- including Internet of Things devices -- has undermined public trust in these technologies and the internet, jeopardizing both our economy and democracy. To combat this, the paper proposes the creation of a “Security Shield” label to inform purchasers that a product has followed recognized best cybersecurity practices and should be more secure than similar products without such a label.