Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

A response to FCC Emails Show Agency Spread Lies to Bolster Dubious DDoS Attack Claims.

Facebook has data-sharing partnerships with at least four Chinese electronics companies, including Huawei, a manufacturing giant that has a close relationship with China’s government. The agreements, which date to at least 2010, gave private access to some user data to Huawei, a telecommunications equipment company that has been flagged by American intelligence officials as a national security threat, as well as to Lenovo, Oppo and TCL.

The Federal Communications Commission wants to prohibit US companies from using its Universal Service Fund (USF) to buy equipment that could pose "a national security threat to the integrity of communications networks or the communications supply chain." That's broadly understood to mean network infrastructure made by China's Huawei and ZTE, two companies that the largest American carriers stopped working with in the US almost six years ago due to pressure from Congress. Nonetheless, US carriers are pushing back against the FCC's latest proposal.

As it wrestled with accusations about a fake cyberattack, the Federal Communications Commission purposely misled several news organizations, choosing to feed journalists false information, while at the same time discouraging them from challenging the agency’s official story.

Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Mark Warner (D-VA) said he is concerned that companies like Huawei and ZTE, which government officials believe are a threat to national security, might have been able to get user data from Facebook after it was revealed the company had data-sharing partnerships with roughly 60 device makers. “Does our personal info reside on a server in China? I think Facebook owes us that answer,” Ranking Member Warner said.

The Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to block the Chinese company Huawei from US telecommunications contracts and supply chains is unconstitutional, misguided, “arbitrary and capricious,” Huawei said. The Chinese telecom giant devoted more than 100 pages to savaging the FCC proposal, which would deny money from the commission’s Universal Service Fund to companies that purchase equipment or services from companies that are deemed threats to national security. That list would include Huawei and ZTE, another Chinese telecom.

A group of 19 Democratic Sens wrote to national security adviser John Bolton urging him to reconsider the move to elminate a top cybersecurity position at the White House, calling it a “step in the wrong direction” and worrying that it would “lead to a lack of unified focus against cyber threats.” The role of White House cybersecurity coordinator was established under the Obama administration to coordinate cybersecurity policymaking efforts across the federal government.

A cybersecurity report from the Commerce Department and Homeland Security has been delivered to the White House in response to a 2017 executive order. The report, on better protecting against botnets and other kinds of automated attacks, was produced in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, Department of Defense and others. It identifies six principal themes:

China this month awarded Ivanka Trump seven new trademarks across a broad collection of businesses, including books, housewares and cushions. At around the same time, President Trump vowed to find a way to prevent a major Chinese telecommunications company from going bust, even though the company has a history of violating American limits on doing business with countries like Iran and North Korea.

Coincidence? Well, probably.