Hackers

CHINA WATCHWhat is Salt Typhoon? A Security Expert Explains the Chinese Hackers and Their Aattack on U.S. Telecommunications Networks
By Richard Forno
Lost in the noise of the story is that Salt Typhoon has proved that the decades of warnings by the internet security community were correct. No mandated secret or proprietary access to technology products is likely to remain undiscovered or used only by “the good guys” – and efforts to require them are likely to backfire.
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CHINA WATCHChinese Hackers Still Lurk in U.S. Telecommunications systems
By Jeff Seldin
Chinese hackers blamed for compromising U.S. telecommunications infrastructure and spying on American presidential campaigns and American officials are still entrenched in those systems.
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CYBERTHREATSU.S. Army Cyber Command, DARPA Evaluate Advanced Cyber Threat Detection Technologies
Joint activities through the Constellation program accelerate maturation of tactical and strategic cyber capabilities.
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CHINA WATCHSuspected Chinese Hack of U.S. Telecoms Reveals Broader Plot
By Jeff Seldin
A hack of U.S. telecommunications systems linked to China that initially appeared to focus on the American presidential campaigns goes much deeper, according to investigators, and is likely part of a vast effort by Beijing to spy on the United States.
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CYBERSECURITYAI-driven Cyberattacks More Sophisticated and Scalable, but There Are Solutions
By Marshall Terrill
Cyberattacks used to be engineered by crafty hackers looking to infiltrate computer systems. Artificial intelligence now allows hackers to create a new scale of attacks that penetrate banking, critical infrastructure, intellectual property, and even traffic lights and baby monitors.
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CYBERSECURITYCyberForce Competition Challenges College Students to Use Cybersecurity Skills to Defend Their Wind Energy System
By Jenna V. Wray
College teams will work to outsmart a simulated attack on a U.S. wind energy plant. The CyberForce Competition offers students hands-on experience, igniting their passion for cybersecurity.
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CYBERSECURITYSalt Typhoon Hack Shows There's No Security Backdoor That's Only for The "Good Guys"
By Joe Mullin and Cindy Cohn
If U.S. policymakers care about China and other foreign countries engaging in espionage on U.S. citizens, it’s time to speak up in favor of encryption by default. If these policymakers don’t want to see bad actors take advantage of their constituents, domestic companies, or security agencies, again—they should speak up for encryption by default.
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AIOversight Revealed in AI Image Recognition Tools
Artificial intelligence can help people process and comprehend large amounts of data with precision, but the image recognition platforms and computer vision models that are built into AI frequently overlook an important back-end feature called the alpha channel. Researchers developed a proprietary attack called AlphaDog to study how hackers can exploit this oversight.
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HOMELAND THREATAS2025 Homeland Threat Assessment
DHS has issued its 2025 threat assessment, focusing on the most direct, pressing threats to the U.S. homeland during the next year. The assessment is organized around DHS missions that most closely align or apply to these threats—public safety, border and immigration, critical infrastructure, and economic security.
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ELECTION INTEGRITYElection Security: When to Worry, When to Not
By Cindy Cohn
Everyone wants an election that is secure and reliable and that will ensure that the voters’ actual choices are reflected in the results. At the same time, not every problem in voting technology or systems is worth pulling the fire alarm —we have to look at the bigger story and context. And we have to stand down when our worst fears turn out to be unfounded.
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ELECTION INTEGRITYU.S. Warns Voters of Disinformation Deluge
By Jeff Seldin
American voters are likely about to be swamped by a flood of misinformation and influence campaigns engineered by U.S. adversaries aiming, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials, to sway the results of the upcoming presidential election and cast doubt on the process itself.
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CYBERSECURITYYou’d Never Fall for an Online Scam, Right?
By Liz Mineo
Wrong, says cybersecurity expert. Con artists use time-tested tricks that can work on anyone regardless of age, IQ — what’s changed is scale.
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CYBERSECURITYNew Security Protocol Shields Data from Attackers During Cloud-Based Computation
By Adam Zewe
The technique leverages quantum properties of light to guarantee security while preserving the accuracy of a deep-learning model.
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DHSDHS Awards $279.9 million in Grant Funding for State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program
DHS announced the availability of $279.9 million in grant funding for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024 State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP). Now in its third year, this program provides funding to state, local, and territorial (SLT) governments to help reduce cyber risk and build resilience against evolving cybersecurity threats.
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ELECTION INTEGRITYIntelligence Suggests Iran Sought to Ensnare Trump, Biden in Hack-and-Leak
By Jeff Seldin
Iran’s efforts to upend U.S. politics ahead of November’s presidential election by targeting the campaign of former President Donald Trump went well beyond a standard hack-and-leak operation. According to U.S. intelligence officials, Tehran sought to ensnare the campaign of Trump’s then-opponent, incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden.
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