Russia & UK grid; Roger Stone’s shifting story; U.S. weapons could be hacked, and more

The legal framework that gave Jaworski authority to do this no longer exists, and the regulations governing Mueller’s office only include very limited reports to Congress. Yet there has long been an expectation that the special counsel or Rosenstein will transmit to lawmakers a report on their investigative steps in the Russia investigation, including a breakdown of all the ways President Trump has attempted to obstruct justice by, say, firing FBI director James Comey or floating pardons for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. As flagged in Lawfare, what’s striking about the Watergate road map is how unpretentious and by-the-book it is; it is not the product of an overzealous, overreactive prosecutor in the mold of Kenneth Starr, but rather a modest document that is careful to simply present facts, avoid legal conclusions, and defer to Congress. That’s more or less Mueller’s style of doing things, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the special counsel has read the Watergate road map to inform his own thinking about how he’ll communicate his findings to lawmakers.

Roger Stone’s shifting story is a liability (Natasha Bertrand, The Atlantic)
The longtime Trump confidant could face federal charges if Special Counsel Robert Mueller determines he lied to Congress about his contacts with campaign officials and WikiLeaks.

Londongrad: Explosion in number of Russian spies in UK (James Booth, CityA.M.)
The number of Russian spies in the UK has exploded in recent years with up to five times as many Russian case offices in the UK as there were in 2010, a new report says.

Putin cancels 100th anniversary celebrations of GRU after Salisbury blunders (Rebecca Perring, Express)
Vladimir Putin has cancelled plans to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his bungling GRU spy agency because of the Salisbury poisoning disaster.

Did Russian hackers just steal private messages from 81,000 Facebook accounts? (Davey Winder, Forbes)
Russian hackers claim to have successfully stolen the profiles of up to 120 million Facebook users. The group have published the details of 257,000 of them in order to advertise the sale of the full database. According to a BBC report threat intelligence experts have confirmed that 81,000 of these samples included the private messages of Facebook users.

America’s weapons could be hacked—here’s how to stop it (Kathryn Waldron, National Interest)
This past Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed a terrifying report: America’s weapon systems are riddled with cyber vulnerabilities . These vulnerabilities are leaving U.S. defenses open to attack. This cannot remain the status quo. The Department of Defense (DOD) must bring its weapon systems’ cybersecurity up to speed by addressing past  failures and attracting new cybersecurity expertise to protect America’s increasingly tech-dependent future.
The GAO’s recent tests found vulnerabilities in “nearly all” weapon systems currently being developed. The details of the vulnerabilities are alarming. According to the report, in tests of major weapon systems DOD is currently developing, “testers playing the role of adversary were able to take control of systems relatively easily and operate largely undetected.” Flaws as basic as poor password management and unencrypted communications—one administrator’s password took only nine seconds to guess—plagued the systems. Test teams were able to observe remote monitors, send annoying pop-ups, change or delete data, and even cause systems to shut down entirely. In one instance, a two-person test team hacked its way to full control of a system in just a day.
As though these vulnerabilities were not alarming enough, DOD officials seemed oblivious to the potential danger they faced. As the report notes, “Program officials GAO met with believed their systems were secure and discounted some test results as unrealistic.”