• Scope, Damage of Massive Russian Hack Still Uncertain

    Cyberexperts inside and outside the U.S. government are scrambling to determine the dimensions of the massive hack by Russian government hackers of dozens of government agencies and private organizations. “While the Russians did not have the time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them. It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy,” said Thomas Bossert, Trump’s former cybersecurity adviser. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), after closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which members were briefed by the intelligence community, said he was “deeply alarmed, and even downright frightened.”

  • Six Men Indicted in Alleged Plot to Kidnap Michigan Governor

    Six men were charged Thursday with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in an alleged plot by right-wing extremists who were angry over her coronavirus containment policies. The suspects were arrested in October after an FBI probe into alleged plans to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in northern Michigan.

  • Polarization Increases with Economic Decline, Becoming Cripplingly Contagious

    The rise of populist movements is changing political systems around the world. As support for these “anti-elite” movements intensifies, many are scrambling to understand whether economic decline and intensifying inter-group conflict are playing a role.

  • Suspected Al-Shabab Operative Brought to US to Face Terror Charges

    An al-Shabab terror group operative accused of conspiring to carry out a 9/11-style attack in the United States has been brought to New York to face terrorism charges, the Justice Department announced on Wednesday. Kenyan national Cholo Abdi Abdullah is accused of conspiring to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into a building in the United States. As part of the plot directed by senior al-Shabab leaders, Abdullah  obtained pilot training in the Philippines. 

  • U.S. National Security Officials Investigating Hacker Intrusions

    The Trump administration acknowledged Sunday that several U.S. institutions were hacked on behalf of a foreign government. Cybersecurity experts believe Russia is likely behind the attack on the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments in what U.S. media is calling one of the most sophisticated attacks on U.S. government systems in years.

  • Quick Thoughts on the Russia Hack

    David Sanger, building on a Reuters story, reports in the New York Times that some country, probably Russia, “broke into a range of key government networks, including in the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and had free access to their email systems.” The breach appears to be much broader. Jack Goldsmith writes that The U.S. approach to preventing these breaches appears to involve five elements, but that, on the whole, these elements have failed to stop, prevent or deter high-level breaches.

  • U.S. Removes States from List of Terrorism-Supporting States

    Since the April 2019 fall of Sudanese dictator Omar Al-Bashir, the expectation was that the United States would remove Sudan from the Terrorism-Supporting States list. On Monday, 14 December, the United States has formally done so.

  • Guns, Drones and Poison: The New Age of Assassination

    We are living in the greatest-ever age of assassination as states, fearful of the twin threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, are using increasingly sophisticated intelligence to track and kill dangerous people and deprive other states of dangerous knowledge.

  • A Better Kind of Cybersecurity Strategy

    During the opening ceremonies of the 2018 Winter Olympics, held in PyeongChang, South Korea, Russian hackers launched a cyberattack that disrupted television and internet systems at the games. The incident was resolved quickly, but because Russia used North Korean IP addresses for the attack, the source of the disruption was unclear in the event’s immediate aftermath. There is a lesson in that attack, and others like it, at a time when hostilities between countries increasingly occur online. In contrast to conventional national security thinking, such skirmishes call for a new strategic outlook, according to one expert.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Allows 3 Muslim Men to Sue FBI Agents in “No Fly” Case

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that three Muslim men who were put on the U.S. government’s no-fly list for allegedly refusing to serve as FBI informants could sue FBI agents for monetary damages.

  • Israel, Morocco to Normalize Relations

    The White House announced Thursday, 10 December, that Morocco would normalize its relations with Israel, as three other Arab countries have already done recently, and that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara.

  • Germany Worried about “Violent Potential” among Anti-Lockdown Protesters

    Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has identified an “intensified escalation potential” within Querdenker movement that includes coronavirus skeptics. Querdenker adherents, including coronavirus-skeptics and anti-lockdown protesters, claim the COVID-19 pandemic and long-established federal and regional laws aimed at halting the pathogen’s spread infringe on citizens’ liberties.

  • Shadowy Turkish Ultra-Nationalist Group Under Scrutiny in Europe

    A shadowy Turkish ultra-nationalist group is under increasing scrutiny in Europe after French officials banned them for violent actions and inciting hate speech in November. The Grey Wolves have been operating inside Turkey for decades and have been accused of politically motivated violence mainly against left-wing leaders, ethnic Kurds and Turkey’s Alevi sectarian minority.

  • Modernizing the Department of Homeland Security

    DHS was born out of the horror of 9/11, but it is no longer clear that counterterrorism and immigration enforcement need to be the department’s dominant missions in the future. Carrie Cordero and Katrina Mulligan write that, instead, Congress and the new administration should evaluate how to keep Americans safe and secure in a world where pandemics, climate change and cybersecurity pose threats to the country’s way of life on a scale that was once the primary domain of terrorism.

  • Russian Government Hackers Exploit Known Vulnerability in Virtual Workspaces

    The National Security Agency (NSA) released a Cybersecurity Advisory on Monday, detailing how Russian state-sponsored actors have been exploiting a vulnerability in VMware products to access protected data on affected systems.