Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

On May 7, 2017, the Home Box Office (HBO) program “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” aired a segment in which the host John Oliver discussed the Federal Communications Commission’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” (RIF) proceeding and encouraged viewers to visit the Commission’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) and file comments.

The Chinese government certainly has the ability to pursue an online political disinformation campaign directed at foreign elections — but hasn’t yet because it favors long-term thinking over Russia’s scorched-earth foreign policy, experts said. Researchers note that China could turn its sights on the US if it wanted to. “The question for me and some other researchers is: will they make that jump more aggressively to the English language space in the more heavy-handed manipulation sense?

Congress is sending President Donald Trump legislation that would force technology companies to disclose if they allowed countries like China and Russia to examine the inner workings of software sold to the US military. The legislation, part of the Pentagon’s spending bill, was drafted after an investigation found software makers allowed a Russian defense agency to hunt for vulnerabilities in software used by some agencies of the US government, including the Pentagon and intelligence services. Security experts said allowing Russian authorities to probe the internal workings of software, kno

Two years after Russia interfered in the American presidential campaign, the nation has done little to protect itself against a renewed effort to influence voters in the coming congressional midterm elections, according to lawmakers and independent analysts. They say that voting systems are more secure against hackers, thanks to action at the federal and state levels — and that the Russians have not targeted those systems to the degree they did in 2016. But Russian efforts to manipulate U.S.

Facebook has identified a coordinated political influence campaign, with dozens of inauthentic accounts and pages that are believed to be engaging in political activity around divisive social issues ahead of November’s midterm elections. The company detected and removed more than 32 pages and accounts connected to the influence campaign on Facebook and Instagram as part of its investigations into election interference.

In a recent press briefing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced that the grand jury assembled by Special Counsel Robert Mueller had returned an indictment against 12 officers of Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (better known as Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, or GRU).

Sen Ben Sasse (R-NE) says the Trump Administration needs to get serious about cyberdefense. And he’s taking some cues from history with the hope of kicking the administration into action. Tucked in a massive defense policy bill Congress appears poised to pass in the coming weeks is a measure from Sen Sasse that would create a commission of top national security officials, lawmakers and experts to draw up a comprehensive cyberdefense strategy for the country. The proposal is based on the Project Solarium Commission, a Cold War effort President Dwight D.

The major problem law enforcement faces in obtaining digital evidence is not the encryption of devices but figuring out which company holds the relevant data and how to get it, according to a study released by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Though much of the debate around access to digital evidence has focused on the challenges law enforcement agencies face in cracking encrypted devices or decoding encrypted data, CSIS researchers William A.

The Justice Department has had some setbacks lately in its push for access to encrypted devices. But now it’s doubling down. In a highly anticipated cyber task force report commissioned by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, DOJ outlines a 7-point plan to tackle what it calls the "going dark" problem posed by the spread of strong encryption. Among them: Considering whether to pursue legislation to give law enforcement a guaranteed way in to encrypted devices and software in criminal investigations.