Page 45 - Inside Defense News Today

Anne Neuberger briefs the White House press corps on Feb. 17, 2021 The White House is standing down the two interagency groups tasked with managing the governments response to the cybersecurity incidents involving SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange, citing improving trends in patching. "Due to the vastly increased patching and reduction in victims, we are standing down the current UCG surge efforts and will be handling further responses through standard incident management procedures," according...

By Justin Katz   Rep. Michael McCaul on Thursday said the House next week will again vote on a bipartisan bill to establish a new Office of Cyber Issues at the State Department as well as an ambassador position for cyberspace. “I believe that setting up an ambassador at large is very important so that we have international norms and standards when it comes to cyberspace,” McCaul said at an event hosted by the McCrary Institute of Auburn University. The bill, the Cyber Diplomacy Act, which ...

By Justin Katz   The White House on Thursday announced a range of sanctions against Russia to punish the Kremlin for its involvement in the hacking campaign against SolarWinds and its efforts to influence the presidential election. The sanctions, the first formal retaliation the United States has announced since discovering nine federal networks were breached by Russian foreign intelligence agents, targets six technology companies that support the country’s spy services. The sanctions also p...

By Justin Katz   Senate lawmakers on Wednesday continued to press Army Gen. Paul Nakasone for solutions that might prevent another massive cybersecurity intrusion into federal networks, but the director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command insisted the answer cannot be boiled down to a single authority or investment. “Senator, I’m not seeking legal authorities either for NSA or for U.S. Cyber Command,” Nakasone told Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) during a hearing wi...

By Justin Katz   In its first publicly available worldwide threat assessment report since 2019, the intelligence community is warning that the United States’ adversaries are increasingly using cyberspace to attack the country and that activities of foreign militaries will be more likely to impact civilian society. “States’ increasing use of cyber operations as a tool of national power, including increasing use by militaries around the world, raises the prospect of more destructive and di...

By Justin Katz   Microsoft on Tuesday released patches for two newly discovered vulnerabilities in on-premise Exchange servers, separate from zero-day exploits found in March, and the company is crediting the National Security Agency with identifying the flaws. “These new vulnerabilities were reported by a security partner through standard coordinated vulnerability disclosure and found internally by Microsoft,” according to a company blog post. “We have not seen the vulnerabilities used ...

Out of all the Marines offered shots so far, 38.9 percent are saying no. Nearly 40 percent of US Marines are declining COVID-19 vaccinations, according to a new report. Some 75,500 Marines have received vaccine shots, CNN reported Friday. But 48,000 other Marines have turned the shots down. That means that out of all the Marines offered shots so far, 38.9 percent are saying no. Another 102,000 Marines have not yet been offered vaccines. These stats are even more grim than reports from Feb...

By Justin Katz   Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is continuing to call on the Biden administration to nominate someone to fill his old post, citing the jobs importance in shaping the federal governments future networks. There is a "need for somebody to be setting a vision for what the federal civilian executive branch, the dot-gov, what does it look like in three to four to five years?" Krebs said on Wednesday during a virtual for...

By Justin Katz   The top two senators on a committee overseeing the Department of Homeland Security are calling on the agency to provide documents that would highlight the capabilities and limitations of the federal governments flagship cybersecurity programs. Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) want the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to provide "documents sufficient to show" the technical capabilities and any planned improvements of Einstein and the Continuo...

Sen. King speaks at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. (U.S. Navy photo) Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), one of the chairs of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, told reporters on Wednesday he and other lawmakers are drafting legislation that would mandate private sector companies supporting critical infrastructure to notify the government if their network is breached. "The commission will be recommending a breach notification law applying to critical infrastructure shortly, probably within the ...