• Spotting Russian bots trying to influence politics

    A team of researchers has isolated the characteristics of bots on Twitter through an examination of bot activity related to Russian political discussions. The team’s findings provide new insights into how Russian accounts influence online exchanges using bots, or automated social media accounts, and trolls, which aim to provoke or disrupt. “There is a great deal of interest in understanding how regimes and political actors use bots in order to influence politics,” explains one researcher. “Russia has been at the forefront of trying to shape the online conversation using tools like bots and trolls, so a first step to understanding what Russian bots are doing is to be able to identify them.”

  • Kaspersky Lab appeals DHS debarment

    Kaspersky Lab yesterday announced that it is seeking an appeal in federal court of U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) decision on Binding Operational Directive 17-01 banning the use of the company’s products in federal agencies. The company cites reputational and revenue impact of a Binding Operational Directive based on media reports, rumor, and unsubstantiated allegations.

  • DHS, election industry members to launch Sector Coordinating Council

    Election industry representatives from across the country met last week with DHS and representatives from the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to launch the formation of an industry-led Sector Coordinating Council (SCC). Sector Coordinating Councils are bodies that enable critical infrastructure owners and operators to share information and work together with DHS on sector-specific strategies, policies, and activities.

  • Russia-related intelligence information left out of Trump's daily briefings for fear it would upset him

    White House and national security officials have said that they purposefully leave intelligence information on Russian ongoing hacking and disinformation activities against the United States out of President Donald Trump’s daily briefings for fear such intelligence information will upset him. If the information cannot be left out, it is usually placed toward the end of the briefing in order to prevent a situation in which the president would refuse to listen to or discuss the rest of the PDB (Presidential Daily Brief).

  • What is Vladimir Putin really up to? Carnegie scholars aim to find out

    The Trump administration’s national security team – of not the president himself – is increasingly concerned that Russia is expanding its influence around the world at a time when the United States and leading Western powers in Europe are focused on their own domestic problems. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is about to launch a two-year project, called “The Return of Global Russia: A Reassessment of the Kremlin’s International Agenda,” aiming to examine and analyze Russia’s activist foreign and military policies. According to Carnegie researchers, Moscow is trying to systematically undermine democracies such as the United States and alliances like the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

  • Sen. Marco Rubio: “Vladimir Putin chose to interfere in U.S. elections”

    “[W]hat is abundantly clear is that Vladimir Putin chose to interfere in the U.S. elections — in my opinion, not so much to favor one candidate over another, but to sow instability”; “[H]is ultimate goal was to ensure that whoever was elected the next U.S. president, they did so with their credibility damaged. I also think that he wanted to exploit the already existing divisions in American society for the purpose of forcing us to go through what we’re going through right now — investigations, divisive debates, talk about impeachment, and the like.”

  • The “Russia Story”; Russia’s meddling was U.S. “intelligence failure”; cyber forensics, and more

    · What is the “Russia Story”?

    · Defending the West from Russian disinformation: The role of institutions

    · What Putin really wants

    · Russian bots manipulate online conversation about Olympics, sexual harassment

    · WikiLeaks faces four U.S. probes into its 2016 election role and CIA leaks

    · Rep. Eric Swalwell breaks down how Russia infected the U.S. election

    · As Russia subverts missile treaty, U.S. looking at new weapons

    · Exposing Russian interference – the value of real-time forensics

    · Ex-spy chief: Russia’s election hacking was an “intelligence failure”

    · Company that used Russian coders for Pentagon project strikes deal

  • Cybersecurity expert: Iranian hacking is a “coordinated, probably military, endeavor”

    On the heels of a report this week documenting Iran’s increasingly aggressive hacking attacks around the globe, a cybersecurity expert assessed that the advanced nature of the attacks suggests a “coordinated, probably military, endeavor.” A report released this week, by FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, noticed increased and increasingly advanced cyber-espionage efforts by groups that have been tied to Iran, and to the nation’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

  • Lawmakers request additional documents from DHS re: Kaspersky investigation

    U.S. House Science, Space, and Technology Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) sent a letter Tuesday to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requesting documents and information related to the DHS directive to all government agencies to identify and remove Kaspersky Lab software from their computer systems.

  • U.K. government agencies told to remove Kaspersky software from their systems

    In another example of a Western government taking decisive action to limit the ability of Russian government hackers to steal sensitive information, The U.K. cyber security agency on Friday has advised U.K. government agencies to remove Kaspersky Lab’s products from their systems.

  • Federal agencies complete second phase of Kaspersky product removal

    The U.S. federal government has completed the first two phases of a three-part plan to remove all Kaspersky Lab’s products from government computer systems. The U.S. intelligence community said that the Russian cybersecurity company’s anti-virus software was used to collect sensitive information from the systems on which it was installed, and deliver that information to Russia’s intelligence agencies.

  • Russia increasingly uses hacker mercenaries for cyberattacks: FBI

    FBI director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Thursday that state-actors such as Russia are increasingly relying on hacker mercenaries, blurring the lines between government-backed hackers and cyber criminals. Wray told lawmakers that increasingly, such hybrid government-criminal breaches are becoming a reality. “You have the blend of a nation-state actor, in that case, the Russian intelligence service, using the assistance of criminal hackers, which you think of almost like mercenaries, being used to commit cyberattacks,” the FBI director said.

  • Antivirus but not anti-spy

    The late senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin (he died in 1989) made a name for himself for his Golden Fleece Awards — awards given each year to the most wasteful U.S. government programs. Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), continuing in Proxmire’s tradition, has just released the third volume of his annual of his Federal Fumbles: 100 Ways the Government Dropped the Ball. One of the U.S. federal government’s major fumbles has been the way it has dealt with Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. The U.S. intelligence community has long suspected that Kaspersky Lab was using its popular antivirus software – used not only by individuals and corporations, but also by U.S. government agencies – to collect sensitive information from the computer systems on which the software was installed, and deliver that information to the GRU and the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency.

  • “We know” Russia hacked election, and such cyberattacks can happen again: Sen. Angus King

    Though President Trump says he is not convinced that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, U.S. Sen. Angus King of Maine said that he and his colleagues on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which is probing the matter, have “no doubt whatsoever” of Moscow’s involvement. “We know they did it, we know it was sophisticated, we know it was serious, and we know they’re coming back!” said King during a discussion at the Harvard Kennedy School.

  • The time to hack-proof the 2018 election is expiring — and Congress is way behind

    Lawmakers are scrambling to push something — anything — through Congress which would help secure the U.S. voting systems ahead of the 2018 elections. It might, however, already be too late for some critical targets. By this point during the 2016 election cycle, Russian government hackers had already breached the Democratic National Committee’s networks for at least three months.