Letter: Respecting office, but not the man “Couldn't Agree More”
I must respond to the letter “Couldn’t Agree More” of Oct. 5. The letter writer said whether or not we agree with the president, we should show respect for the office.
The writer must have forgotten the abuse President Barack Obama took from the other side, including Trump, who accused him of lying about where he was born, or the congressman who called him a liar at a State of the Union speech. These are only the most polite of the insults hurled at President Obama.
Fifth
Domain Cyber
Nordic
governments have greenlighted deeper collaboration within the cyber defense
strategies and response domain between the militaries of Sweden, Denmark,
Finland and Norway. The strengthening of interstate cyber defense and security
is being tasked to the Nordic Defense Cooperation, or NORDEFCO, the primary vehicle
for joint military collaboration between the Nordic armed forces. The primary
objective for a unified approach among Nordic countries is to develop more
effective joint cyber defense capabilities based on enhanced information
sharing, identifying best-practice computer emergency responses and more
regular cybersecurity based defense exercises. NORDEFCO has already run a
number of preliminary cyber-defense collaboration projects. These have included
identifying possible legal and unidentified barriers to deepening collaboration
among Nordic militaries
Former US cyber diplomat wants tougher consequences state backed hacks
Labor has called for the Government to take “real action” in response to the hacking of an Australian defence contractor, which resulted in the theft of 30 gigabytes of data. The hacker stole technical informationon smart bombs, the Joint Strike Fighter, the Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and several naval vessels over five months last year.
Former US cyber diplomat wants tougher consequences state backed hacks
Labor has called for the Government to take “real action” in response to the hacking of an Australian defence contractor, which resulted in the theft of 30 gigabytes of data. The hacker stole technical informationon smart bombs, the Joint Strike Fighter, the Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft and several naval vessels over five months last year.
Top German intelligence
officials on Thursday urged lawmakers to give them greater legal authority to
"hack back" in the event of cyber attacks from foreign powers.
Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV domestic intelligence agency, told the
parliamentary oversight committee it should be possible to destroy data stolen
from German servers and moved to foreign servers to prevent it from being
misused.
The
Intercept
The growing propensity of government hackers to reuse code and computers from rival nations is undermining the integrity of hacking investigations and calling into question how online attacks are attributed, according to researchers from Kaspersky Lab. In a paper set for release today at the Virus Bulletin digital security conference in Madrid, the researchers highlight cases in which they’ve seen hackers acting on behalf of nation-states stealing tools and hijacking infrastructure previously used by hackers of other nation-states. Investigators need to watch out for signs of this or risk tracing attacks to the wrong perpetrators, the researchers said.
AS ALWAYS, THERE’S NO WAY ANY SATIRIST CAN COMPETE WITH REAL LIFE FOR ITS PURE ABSURDITY: As Tom Wolfe wrote in the liner notes to theBonfire of the Vanities, “We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.”
Gov Info
Security
October 3,
2017
During the first of
three Congressional hearings this week to examine the Equifax mega-breach,
members of both parties Tuesday grilled - and at times roasted - the firm's
former CEO for three hours about details surrounding the incident. House
Cyber Leader Wants to Give Equifax the Kaspersky Treatment
A congressional cyber
leader wants the Homeland Security Department to use the same authority it used
to ban Kaspersky software from government systems to cancel a $7 million IRS
contract with the breached credit rating agency Equifax. Equifax, which recently
disclosed a data breach that compromised information about more than 140
million Americans, “displayed cybersecurity negligence of epic proportions,”
Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, said. He urged Homeland Security “in the
strongest possible terms” to use powers outlined in the 2015 Cybersecurity Act
and a 2014 update to the Federal Information Security Management Act to
“address this troubling development.”
FCW
October 6,
2017
An Inspector
General's audit found that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's
protocols for responding to a data breach aren't being followed, even as the
agency has faced dozens of security incidents in the past two years.
Ars
Technica Rob Joyce,
the White House cybersecurity czar, said on Tuesday that the government should
end using the Social Security number as a national identification method.
"I believe the Social Security number has outlived its usefulness,"
said Joyce, while speaking at The Washington Post's Cybersecurity Summit.
"Every time we use the Social Security number, you put it at risk."
One problem with the Social Security number, he said, is that a victim of
identity theft cannot get it changed after it has been stolen. Joyce's comments
come a month after the Equifax hack, in which hackers gained access to the
Social Security numbers of as many as 143 million Americans. "It's a
flawed system that we can't roll back after a breach," he said. The Social
Security number, originally a code for federal retirement benefits, has grown
to become a personal identifier used for everything from getting a job to
buying auto insurance.
Ars
Technica
Nextgov The Federal Bureau of
Investigation wants to publicly shame cyber criminals after they’ve been caught
as part of an effort to make sure malicious actors don’t count on anonymity.
“You will be identified pursued, and held to account no matter where you are in
the world,” Paul Abbate, the FBI’s executive assistant director of the
Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch, said at a U.S. Chamber of
Commerce event in Washington Wednesday.
The Hill October 4,
2017
Deputy Attorney
General Rod Rosenstein on Wednesday lamented how encryption has made it more
difficult for law enforcement officials to do their jobs, calling for a public
debate about the use of the technology.
Reuters
October 6,
2017
The U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC), Wall Street's top regulator, has discovered a
vulnerability in its corporate filing database that could cause the system to
collapse, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.
Politico
White House officials
believe that chief of staff John Kelly’s personal cellphone was compromised,
potentially as long ago as December, according to three U.S. government
officials. The discovery raises concerns that hackers or foreign governments
may have had access to data on Kelly’s phone while he was secretary of Homeland
Security and after he joined the West Wing.
The Wall
Street Journal October 6,
2017
A suspected
Chinese cyberattack on the website of a prominent Washington think tank drew a
complaint from U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week in a meeting with
top Chinese government officials. The website of the Hudson Institute crashed
earlier this week, shortly before the organization was scheduled to host an event
with Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese businessman and political dissident who has
alleged corruption within China’s leadership.
Reuters October 2,
2017
Hewlett
Packard Enterprise allowed a Russian defense agency to review the inner
workings of cyber defense software used by the Pentagon to guard its computer
networks, according to Russian regulatory records and interviews with people
with direct knowledge of the issue. The HPE system, called ArcSight, serves as
a cybersecurity nerve center for much of the U.S. military, alerting analysts
when it detects that computer systems may have come under attack. ArcSight is
also widely used in the private sector. The Russian review of ArcSight’s source
code, the closely guarded internal instructions of the software, was part of
HPE’s effort to win the certification required to sell the product to Russia’s
public sector, according to the regulatory records seen by Reuters and
confirmed by a company spokeswoman.