Our picksThe Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak | Power, Water Seen as Targets | Curbing the Rise of Digital Destabilization

Published 14 June 2021

·  The Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak

·  What We Owe to Ransomware Gangs

·  Power, Water Seen as Targets

·  Lawmakers Press Biden to Give Putin Ultimatum on Ransomware Gangs

·  QAnon Follower Tim Stewart’s an Old Friend of Australia’s PM Scott Morrison. His Family Reported Him to the National Security Hotline

·  No Easy Way Out for Biden Administration on Migrant Surge, Experts Say

·  DHS, DoD Release Plans on What to Do with Border Wall Contracts, Future Projects

·  As Ransomware Demands Boom, Insurance Companies Keep Paying Out

·  Age of the Cyber-Attack: US Struggles to Curb Rise of Digital Destabilization

·  Russia Agrees to Cyber Rules and Violates Them at the Same Time

The Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak (Joel Zivot, MedPageToday)
China could be on the hook for a trillion dollars, but the U.S. isn’t blameless.

What We Owe to Ransomware Gangs  (Paul F. Roberts, Forbes)
We learned this week that the meat processing industry in the United States - a vital link in the nation’s food supply chain- is vulnerable to crippling cyber attacks. This worrying revelation follows closely on the heels of a report last month showing that our nation’s pipeline infrastructure - which delivers fuel from refineries to gas pumps- contains serious cyber security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by rival nations or criminal groups. Also: cyber defenses at our nation’s research universities, hospitals and public safety agencies are substandard and need urgent attention and investment. We now know this.

Power, Water Seen as Targets  (Bloomberg / Arkansas Democrat Gazette)
Cybersecurity experts fear systems’ safeguards inadequate

Lawmakers Press Biden to Give Putin Ultimatum on Ransomware Gangs  (Martin Matishak, Politico)
Members of both parties want Biden to use the summit in Geneva to assert a more aggressive approach to Russia-based criminal networks.

QAnon Follower Tim Stewart’s an Old Friend of Australia’s PM Scott Morrison. His Family Reported Him to the National Security Hotline  (Louise Milligan, Jeanavive McGregor and Lauren Day, ABC.au)
The family of a man who has been friends with Prime Minister Scott Morrison for decades and follows the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon has revealed they are so concerned about his beliefs they have notified the national security hotline several times. The Stewart family have broken their silence to Four Corners because they are worried about the immersion of Tim Stewart in QAnon beliefs.

No Easy Way Out for Biden Administration on Migrant Surge, Experts Say  (Julian Resendiz, WGNO)
ice President Harris’ trip to the region won’t bring overnight solutions, but analysts favor administration’s regional cooperation approach

DHS, DoD Release Plans on What to Do with Border Wall Contracts, Future Projects  (Bridget Johnson, HSTosay)
Funds that the previous president had intended to pay for tall bollard fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border will now be allocated to projects such as fixing environmental damage from previous construction and redirected back to improvements at military facilities.
The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense both released outlines today of what they plan to do with the funds that had been diverted to border wall construction by the Trump administration.

As Ransomware Demands Boom, Insurance Companies Keep Paying Out  (Josephine Wolf, Wired)
While major carriers like AXA have backed away from covering ransoms, don’t expect the industry at large to break the vicious cycle.

Age of the Cyber-Attack: US Struggles to Curb Rise of Digital Destabilization  (Dominic Rushe and Julian Borger, Guardian)
The ransomware attack that caused long lines for fuel on the east coast was just part of a dramatic change in the scale and nature of foreign-based threats.

Russia Agrees to Cyber Rules and Violates Them at the Same Time  (Joseph Marks, Washington Post)
As President Biden prepares to go toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin at a summit in Switzerland this week, the United States and its allies are facing a test over whether they will hold Russia accountable for continually violating rules of good behavior in cyberspace. 
Russia has readily agreed to many of those rules, including that nations shouldn’t hack each other’s critical infrastructure and shouldn’t harbor cyber criminals in their territory, as Ellen Nakashima and I report