The latest coverage of the Department of Homeland Security and cyber threats around the globe.
By Ryan Nakashima - Associated Press
Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to. Published August 13, 2018
With early voting beginning Monday in some Florida counties, the Senate race there was jolted as Republican Gov. Rick Scott kept up the pressure on Sen. Bill Nelson's thus-far unsubstantiated claims that Russian operatives have already compromised Florida elections.
The theft of an empty plane by an airline worker who performed dangerous loops before crashing into a remote island in Puget Sound illustrated what aviation experts have long known: One of the biggest potential perils for commercial air travel is airline or airport employees causing mayhem.
The U.S. is bracing for cyberattacks Iran could launch in retaliation for the re-imposition of sanctions this week by President Donald Trump, cybersecurity and intelligence experts say.
Alex Jones of Infowars has been booted from YouTube, Apple, Spotify and Facebook for what the tech giants consider his rampant hate speech. And with that, Jones has become the face of the censorship fight. This seems counterproductive to those who would silence him, yes?
Facebook and YouTube shut down accounts Monday run by radio host Alex Jones, saying his charged rhetoric violated their policies and were detracting from their efforts to spawn a civil conversation. Apple also said it nixed Mr. Jones' podcast from its iTunes subscription lists, and Spotify erased the host's program from its feed, as social media companies began to take a more active role in policing their content.
The use of explosives-laden drones in an assassination attempt against Venezuela's president over the weekend has sent concern soaring among security officials over the growing threat that even consumer-level drones rigged with rudimentary bombs now pose to heads of state around the world.
Since the advent of nuclear weapons, American deterrence has been based on the notion that only adversarial nations with nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the country's security. In "The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age," David Sanger argues that an additional existential threat now confronts America because we live in a world in which virtually everything we rely on -- whether computers, phones, transportation, electrical power grids, water supplies or global navigation and communications satellites -- is interconnected in cyberspace. It is there that everything is vulnerable to disruption, if not destruction, through the use of cyber-weapons by malevolent adversaries.
The tariffs against China by the Trump administration are not just for economic reasons, although economics plays a major part in the reasoning behind them. The main reason for the tariffs is just what President Trump said: national security.
YouTube and Facebook shut down Alex Jones on their platforms Monday, the latest in a growing crackdown from social media platforms on the controversial radio host.
When White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said media reports compromised the fact that the U.S. government was intercepting Osama bin Laden's satellite phone calls, the media clobbered her.
Lawmakers sought answers Friday from Google chief executive Sundar Pichai after a report said his company intends to launch a censored search engine in China, raising concerns over conforming with the country's infamously restrictive internet rules.
Reddit said Wednesday that it suffered a breach resulting in the compromise of company source code and user data, blaming a hacker for bypassing the two-factor authentication system in place for securing one of the internet's most visited websites.
Congress approved legislation Wednesday forcing tech companies to tell the Pentagon if foreign adversaries have sought access to the source code of any software those firms have sold to the U.S. military.
Top U.S. national security and intelligence officials said Thursday that President Trump is leading a comprehensive, governmentwide effort to stop Russia and others from interfering in the midterm elections, as the White House sought to counter accusations that Mr. Trump is downplaying the threat.
The number of companies in Russia that 'mine' digital cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, increased by 15 percent the first quarter of this year, according to Russia's top digital currency association.
Russia's campaign to warp U.S. social media is jeopardizing America's ability to conduct democratic debate heading into the November midterm elections, the bipartisan heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned Wednesday.
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The Justice Department announced on Wednesday the indictment of three Ukrainian nationals for hacking more than 100 American companies and stealing millions of consumer credit and debit information.
Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that President Trump's predecessor passed down a "cyber-crisis" that saw several high-profile hacks happen after leaving office.
The number of terrorist attacks and associated deaths worldwide declined for a third consecutive year in 2017, according to University of Maryland data released Wednesday, citing a particular drop in incidents by the Islamic State.
President Trump's favorite corporate punching bag is on the verge of landing a breakthrough 10-year, $10 billion Pentagon contract that would transform how the military shares information.
Facebook announced Tuesday that it had pulled nearly three dozen accounts from its main platform and from subsidiary Instagram, saying the pages had engaged in the same sort of divisive political trolling that Russian operatives conducted during the 2016 election season.
The U.K. government should increase oversight of social media like Facebook and election campaigns to protect democracy in the digital age, a parliamentary committee has recommended in a scathing report on fake news, data misuse and interference by Russia.
Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter Wednesday urging government agencies to start abandoning Adobe Flash, an antiquated and vulnerable multimedia software platform that will stop being maintained in nearly two years' time.
Rep. Devin Nunes, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, has endorsed banning the use of electronic voting systems to reduce the risk of further election meddling.
Amazon's facial recognition software wrongly matched dozens of members of Congress to mugshots of other Americans with criminal records, in a test run by the ACLU.
The White House received a bipartisan push Wednesday to ramp up defenses against Russian hacking of U.S. utility networks.
The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday passed its 2019 spending bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, provides about $5 billion for border security efforts -- including President Trump's desired U.S.-Mexico border wall -- and includes several checks on the administration tied to the ongoing child separation crisis at the border.
The soccer ball that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave to President Trump at their summit in Finland apparently contained a chip that can transmit information to nearby cell phones, according to a report.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told Hispanic lawmakers Wednesday that she doesn't know of any illegal immigrant children separated from parents who died while in government custody.
Eliminating law enforcement on the nation's southern border is a cherished goal of a noisy segment of undetermined size among Democrats. Cooler Democratic heads think it's party suicide, and it wouldn't help the nation, either. But cool heads in the party are scarce. Playing the "I'm crazier than thou" game is more fun.
The 12 Russian intelligence officers indicted earlier this month by special counsel Robert Mueller for hacking into the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016 could soon face stiff U.S. financial sanctions.
Google has successfully defended its over 85,000 employees against phishing attacks like the kind that hacked Democrats during the 2016 U.S. presidential race in the year since requiring that staffers use physical, USB-based security keys to access their work accounts, the company said Monday.
The final version of an annual defense bill unveiled recently contains language that will set the nation's first cyberwarfare policy if signed into law.
Russia targeted not only elections but also electrical grids in 2017, U.S. government officials confirmed, according to a Wall Street Journal report published Monday night.
Congress will back off ZTE Corp. crackdowns in the latest defense spending bill, which means President Trump's deal with the Chinese company will stand, two senators confirmed on social media Friday.
Chinese hackers launched a massive attack on internet-connected devices in Finland in an attempt to sweep up audio and visual intelligence ahead of President Trump's summit there with Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a private cyber analysis released Thursday.
The Justice Department announced Thursday it will now notify the public of foreign hacking operations targeting U.S. elections, a new policy implemented in the wake of Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
FBI Director Christoper Wray said Wednesday that he believes a compromise can be reached resolving the so-called "Going Dark" problem caused by criminals using encrypted messaging platforms and mobile devices to obfuscate their communications from investigators, but that legislation would have to be considered if other proposals come up short.
The House on Thursday took another step forward on its 2019 spending bills, passing a $58.7 billion package that funds interior, environmental, financial services and general government programs.
Lawmakers have expressed mounting concern over the ever-expanding and still almost completely unregulated world of cryptocurrencies, from tax issues to preventing them from causing anarchy to simply tying the digital dollars into the world's mainstream banking system.
Congressional efforts to restore Obama-era net neutrality protections garnered rare Republican support Tuesday from Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado.
Executives from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube told Congress Tuesday that while they had identified accounts and posts linked to Russian internet operatives, their activity during the 2016 election was but a drop in the social media ocean.
The nation's largest voting equipment vendor said that remote-access software came preinstalled on some of its election-management systems, effectively creating potential points of entry for attackers to exploit, Motherboard reported Tuesday.
A House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on monitoring social media content immediately broke down into partisan bickering and theater Tuesday, with minority Democrats and some spectators trying to jerk the proceedings back to President Trump's press conference in Helsinki.
The Food and Drug Administration announced it has approved a treatment for smallpox, a disease that has been largely eradicated but still feared for its possible use in biowarfare.
Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab suffered another setback Friday in its efforts to oppose new rules prohibiting the U.S. government from using its antivirus software and services.
President Trump's director of national intelligence warned Friday that foreign hackers are attempting potentially crippling cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure, relating a rash of recent assaults with "alarming activities" detected by U.S. intelligence prior to terrorists striking on September 11, 2001.
The shadowy cryptocurrency bitcoin is alleged to have played a vital role in allowing Russian intelligence officers to hack into the computer networks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016, according to the latest indictment from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
Cybersecurity presents an unprecedented risk costing companies billions of dollars in market valuation, lost revenue and expenses. Every 39 seconds, there is a cyberattack and 64 percent of companies have experienced a web-based attack.
Seeking to bolster the fortunes of their greatest champion, Bolivian coca growers have organized a social media offensive to silence critics of leftist President Evo Morales.
A federal probe prompted by Facebook's ties to disgraced data firm Cambridge Analytica has widened to include the FBI and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, The Washington Post reported Monday.
With more than 20 major elections scheduled in the next two years, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are still not prepared to fend off outside attacks to meddle in campaigns and election counts, an international bipartisan group of political, technology, business and media leaders warned Monday.
Federal Hatch Act investigators have opened a complaint file on Allison Hrabar, the Justice Department employee who was part of a mob that chased Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen from a restaurant earlier last month.
The U.S. Supreme Court had a lesson Tuesday for the good-hearted folk who would apply feelings instead of the Constitution to the interpretation of the law. By the familiar 5 to 4 vote on constitutional issues, the High Court upheld the clear language of Congress in support of President Trump's order limiting the entry of risky foreign nationals to the United States.
Alexa, how do we get competition? When Democrats rule D.C., you have to hand it to them. They know how to take care of their fellow Democrats. When Republicans rule D.C., they take care of the Democrats, too.
Over the last two weeks, there has been a vigorous debate about internet regulation. Under the plan I recently proposed, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would restore internet freedom by rolling back heavy-handed government regulations imposed during the Obama administration. Some have tried to whip Americans into a frenzy by making outlandish claims. Feeding the hysteria are silly accusations that the plan will "end the internet as we know it" or threaten American democracy itself.
Global terrorism is spreading like a dangerous cancer that knows no borders. It cannot be defeated by the military alone. As the Islamic State's grip on Mosul is faltering today, so must its grip on the young minds of Iraq through instruction in religious freedom and reconciliation.
Russia's intelligence service hacks Democratic Party computer networks and puts out stolen emails in a bid to influence the 2016 election. China says it owns 90 percent of the South China Sea and begins building military bases under a vague historical claim to the strategic waterway. Iranian hackers break into American banks and a water control computer network at an upstate New York dam. Welcome to the new form of conflict in the 21st century: information warfare.
Two of the government's highest ranking intelligence officials will go before a House committee next week to testify about President Trump's bombastic claim that his predecessor "tapped" his phones during the 2016 election.
President Trump and the lower federal courts are playing a dangerous game of ping-pong, and the nation's security is paying for it. The president, who is responsible for the nation's safety, proposes and certain federal judges, who have no such responsibility dispose. The president proposes again, and again a judge or two dispose.
The federal government has purged its computers of Kaspersky Lab products, a Democratic senator revealed Tuesday, but contractors and other third-party providers are still ridding their systems of the Russian company's software and services, the head of the Department of Homeland Security added.
The activities of one of China's cyber spymasters has been revealed for the first time in a government report on Beijing's unfair trade practices made public last week.
President Trump told lawmakers meeting on immigration at the White House Thursday that the U.S. should stop accepting immigrants from "sh--hole countries" like Haiti and El Salvador, according to a report.
The White House said Tuesday that North Korea was directly responsible for a "reckless" ransomware attack in May that struck computers in about 150 countries.
President Trump will announce Monday his new National Security Strategy, putting his own stamp on a defense plan that reverses an Obama administration policy by eliminating climate change from a list of threats to national security.
Construction has concluded on the eight prototypes of President Trump's border wall, the government announced Thursday.
Facebook estimates 10 million Americans saw the advertisements that Russian groups purchased to try to influence the presidential election last year, but analysts said that undersells the reach of the ads, which may have been seen by as many as 70 million.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's spokesman said Thursday that federal investigators' moves to wiretap him in 2014 and again in 2016, around the time he was involved with the campaign, were politically motivated.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has fired an information technology staffer following his arrest on a bank fraud charge at a Virginia airport where he was attempting to fly to Pakistan.
Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly officially revoked President Obama's 2014 attempt to broaden his previous deportation amnesty for Dreamers, which had been held up by federal courts for more than two years.
Homeland Security added dozens of jurisdictions to its latest name-and-shame list of sanctuary cities, released Wednesday, including Baltimore, where the police commissioner has said officers would not work with federal agents to enforce immigration laws.
Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab in 2012 was among the first Iraqi refugees to enter the U.S. after President Obama lifted a six-month freeze on such entries as his aides tightened a shaky vetting process.
The FBI believed Huma Abedin's laptop computer did have evidence she and her boss, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, mishandled classified information, according to a search warrant released Tuesday that shows the basis agents had for upending the presidential election with their controversial election-season probe.
Included among the more than 1 billion Yahoo accounts compromised by a 2013 security breach disclosed Wednesday were those of at least 150,000 U.S. government and military employees, according to a researcher who first discovered the stolen data being sold online.
Hillary Clinton's top adviser said the FBI is investigating Russia's possible role in hacking thousands of his personal emails, an intrusion he said Donald Trump's campaign may have been aware of in advance.
