Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

Bowing to White House demands, Republican Senators have backed off their attempt to reimpose US sanctions on the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE. The retreat means ZTE, a company found guilty of selling US goods to Iran in violation of sanctions, will duck Commerce Department penalties that bar US companies from doing business with it. Chinese officials said those penalties would effectively put ZTE out of business.

The Justice Department plans to alert the public to foreign operations targeting US democracy under a new policy designed to counter hacking and disinformation campaigns such as the one Russia undertook in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election. The government will inform American companies, private organizations and individuals that they are being covertly attacked by foreign actors attempting to affect elections or the political process. “Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them,” said Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

The Office of Management and Budget announced Grant Schneider will be the second federal chief information security officer. As such, Schneider will lead cybersecurity strategy across the executive branch and chair the CISO Council. Schneider has been filling the CISO role in an acting capacity and is the National Security Council’s senior director for cybersecurity.

National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone -- the head of the nation’s largest electronic spy agency and the military’s cyberwarfare arm -- has quietly directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections. The move is an attempt to maximize the efforts of the two groups and comes as President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladi­mir Putin was “extremely strong and powerful” in denying Russian involvement in the presidential election two years ago.

ZTE Corp can resume business with its US suppliers, the Commerce Department said July 13, after the Chinese telecommunications giant met the conditions of a deal President Donald Trump made to save the company. The saga over the fate of the Chinese firm began in April when Commerce banned US companies from selling to ZTE as punishment for its failure to honor an earlier US agreement to resolve its sanctions-busting sales to North Korea and Iran. Because ZTE relies on US suppliers to make its smartphones and to build telecommunications networks, the penalty was effectively a death knell.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced new charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton presidential campaign, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rosenstein said the Russians involved belonged to the military intelligence service GRU. They are accused of a sustained cyberattack against Democratic party targets, including its campaign committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign.