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☆ Chinese Hackers Spied on State and Commerce Departments
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Dustin Volz | William Mauldin | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Pentagon Warns of Overcorrection on Secrets After Alleged Teixeira Leaks
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-05 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ The Ultra-Secret Underwater Spy System That Might Have Heard the Titan Implode
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-25 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Got a Warrant? FBI May Need One to Search U.S. Data in Foreign Spy Database
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-22 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Spy Tool Helped FBI Solve Pipeline Hack, Other Major Crimes, U.S. Officials Say
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ U.S. Spy Agencies Buy Vast Quantities of Americans’ Personal Data, U.S. Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Byron Tau | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ How North Korea’s Hacker Army Stole $3 Billion in Crypto, Funding Nuclear Program
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-11 | by ( Robert Mcmillan | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ FBI Searched Jan. 6 Rioters and George Floyd Demonstrators in Spy Database
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Dustin Volz | Byron Tau | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Nearly 300 Arrested in ‘Dark Web’ Fentanyl Crackdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Sadie Gurman | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

‘There is a bit of a whack-a-mole problem here, and we are whacking as hard as we can,’ Attorney General Merrick Garland said. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesWASHINGTON—International authorities have shut down an online marketplace and arrested nearly 300 people who allegedly used it and other parts of the so-called dark web to buy and sell fentanyl and other dangerous opioids, in a sweep officials said underscores how hard it is to stem the tide of drug trafficking in the internet’s hidden corners. The operation went on for more than 18 months and spanned three continents, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Law-enforcement agencies also seized more than $53 million in cash and virtual currencies, along with guns and nearly 2,000 pounds of drugs.

☆ FBI Warrantless Searches of Americans’ Communications Declined Sharply, Spy Agency Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The National Security Agency is allowed to capture without a warrant communications thought to belong to foreigners living abroad., sometimes scooping up Americans’ data in the process. Photo: Patrick Semansky/Associated PressWASHINGTON—The number of warrantless searches of Americans’ telephone calls, emails and text messages conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation plummeted last year, dropping from millions of searches to about 120,000, according to a U.S. intelligence report. A senior FBI official attributed the drop in part to better compliance with restrictions on searches of the data after adoption of internal reforms, as well as to variations in national- security investigations. Additionally, a large percentage of the searches in 2021 were related to efforts to identify potential victims of an unidentified Russian hacking campaign that struck critical infrastructure in the U.S., said the report, which was released Friday. Other factors in the decline include changes in suspected foreign spies’ communications practices and advances in technology.

☆ Leak of Government Secrets Adds Pressure to Overhaul Security Clearances
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( Ben Kesling | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

How the U.S. government clears personnel to see and share its secrets is coming under new pressure after the alleged leak of classified information by Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, according to federal reviews of the process and lawmakers. The widespread number of both government and civilian jobs requiring access to classified information make the system that provides security clearances to millions of people hard to run effectively, those who study it say. Additionally, an explosion of the amount of classified material produced by the government—estimated to be in the billions of records annually—has eroded the significance of classification levels and complicated efforts to create walls around what is truly sensitive, say former officials and outside analysts who study the system.

☆ Intelligence Leaks Cast Spotlight on a Recurring Insider Threat: Tech Support
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Photo Illustration: Madeline MarshallWASHINGTON—Jack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman charged with leaking top-secret U.S. documents, shares at least one thing with leaker Edward Snowden: They both worked in tech support. Massachusetts Airman Teixeira’s alleged disclosures on a social-media platform demonstrate anew how information-technology workers responsible for routine tasks such as network maintenance pose a potential risk to the government’s efforts to control classified information.

☆ U.S. Steps Up Effort to Fight Against Russian Disinformation
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Michael R. Gordon | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ New Spyware Firm Said to Have Helped Hack iPhones Around the Globe
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Dustin Volz | Robert Mcmillan | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Biden Administration Weighs Action Against Russian Cybersecurity Firm
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-07 | by ( John D. Mckinnon | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab has denied that it works with Russia or any government to facilitate cyber espionage. WASHINGTON—President Biden’s Commerce Department is weighing an enforcement action under its online-security rules against Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity company that has long faced accusations of posing a threat to the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter. The action—if it materializes—could become a test case for the Commerce Department’s growing role in policing threats online, according to some of the people, who said the U.S. might deploy the same online-security rules against Chinese-controlled technologies, possibly including TikTok.

☆ U.S. State-Government Websites Use TikTok Trackers, Review Finds
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Byron Tau | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON—More than two dozen state governments have placed web-tracking code made by TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. on official websites, according to a new report from a cybersecurity company, illustrating the difficulties U.S. regulators face in curtailing data-collection efforts by the popular Chinese-owned app. A review of the websites of more than 3,500 companies, organizations and government entities by the Toronto-based company Feroot Security found that so-called tracking pixels from the TikTok parent company were present in 30 U.S. state-government websites across 27 states, including some where the app has been banned from state networks and devices. Feroot collected the data in January and February of this year.

China has routinely denied hacking into businesses or governments in other countries. State-sponsored hackers from China have developed techniques that evade common cybersecurity tools and enable them to burrow into government and business networks and spy on victims for years without detection, researchers with Alphabet Inc.’s Google found. Over the past year, analysts at Google’s Mandiant division have discovered hacks of systems that aren’t typically the targets of cyber espionage. Instead of infiltrating systems behind the corporate firewall, they are compromising devices on the edge of the network—sometimes firewalls themselves—and targeting software built by companies such as VMware Inc. or Citrix Systems Inc. These products run on computers that don’t typically include antivirus or endpoint detection software.

Russia has targeted organizations in at least 17 European nations this year, Microsoft says. Russian government hackers have increased their cyber-espionage attacks against Ukraine and its allies in recent months while deploying novel strains of malicious software, according to research from Microsoft Corp. and other security companies. The findings reflect a renewed commitment by Moscow to conduct cyberattacks and suggest it may be preparing to launch more aggressive and potentially destructive ones to coincide with Russia’s expected spring offensive in eastern Ukraine. The shift follows a relative lull in cyber activity after an initial onslaught when the war began, Western officials and experts said.

☆ China’s Refusal to Help Probes of Covid-19 Origins Leaves Critical Gap, Spy Chief Says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

‘China has not fully cooperated,’ Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said during a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. WASHINGTON—The Chinese government’s refusal to cooperate on investigations into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic has hindered the U.S.’s ability to determine whether the virus emerged naturally or was the result of a lab leak, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday. “China has not fully cooperated, and that is a key critical gap that would help us understand what, exactly, happened,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said during a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

☆ Biden National Cyber Strategy Seeks to Hold Software Firms Liable for Insecurity
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The cyber strategy signed by President Biden is the culmination of a monthslong bureaucratic process that involved more than 20 government agencies. WASHINGTON—The Biden administration said it would pursue laws to establish liability for software companies that sell technology that lacks cybersecurity protections, concluding that market forces alone aren’t sufficient to guard consumers and the nation. Free markets and a reliance on voluntary security frameworks have imposed “inadequate costs” on companies that offer insecure products or services, according to a national cybersecurity strategy released Thursday. It says the administration would work with Congress and the private sector to create liability for software vendors, sketching out in broad terms what such legislation should entail.

☆ Biden Administration Urges Congress to Renew Spy Law
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a letter with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, said the law protects the U.S. from foreign-based cyberattacks and arms traffickers. WASHINGTON—Top Biden administration officials urged Congress to renew an expiring surveillance law they say is vital to addressing a range of national security threats, launching what is expected to be a difficult campaign to persuade lawmakers to not curtail spying powers. In a letter to Tuesday to congressional leadership, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the law, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, protects the U.S. from foreign-based cyberattacks and arms traffickers and yields intelligence to address challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

☆ Joe Manchin Declines to Describe Himself as a Democrat
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Sen. Joe Manchin was often the decisive vote for or against Democratic legislation over the past two years. WASHINGTON—West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin declined to describe himself as a Democrat during a television interview on Sunday and didn’t say if he is running for re-election, highlighting the challenges facing the party’s thin majority in the Senate ahead of what is widely expected to be a tough mission to retain the chamber in 2024. “I identify as an American,” said Mr. Manchin when asked repeatedly during a Fox News appearance if he still considered himself a Democrat. “I’m an American through and through.”

☆ CIA Chief Says China Has Doubts About Its Ability to Invade Taiwan
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The top CIA official said that Putin’s experience in Ukraine has ‘probably reinforced’ the Chinese government’s doubts about invading Taiwan. WASHINGTON—Russia’s struggles to seize and keep territory in Ukraine over the past year has likely fueled doubts by Chinese leader Xi Jinping that China’s military could successfully invade Taiwan later this decade, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns said. “I think our judgment at least is that (Chinese) President Xi and his military leadership have doubts today about whether they could accomplish that invasion,” Mr. Burns said Sunday on CBS . “As they’ve looked at Putin’s experience in Ukraine, that’s probably reinforced some of those doubts.”

Law-enforcement officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco have been dedicating resources to thwarting cyberattacks. Extortion payments from ransomware, a hacking scourge that has crippled hospitals, schools and public infrastructure, fell significantly last year, according to federal officials, cybersecurity analysts and blockchain firms. After ballooning for years, the amount of money being paid to ransomware criminals dropped in 2022, as did the odds that a victim would pay the criminals who installed the ransomware. With ransomware, hackers lock up a victim’s computer network, encrypting hard drives until victims pay.

☆ Supreme Court Turns Away Challenge to Warrantless Surveillance Program
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Jan Wolfe | Dustin Volz | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

The surveillance program permits the National Security Agency to collect intelligence from international phone calls, emails and other digital content. WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court declined to hear a constitutional challenge to a secretive government surveillance program, dealing a setback to privacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a looming debate in Congress over whether to renew the law that authorizes the intelligence tool. In a brief order issued on Tuesday, the high court said it wouldn’t hear arguments challenging the legality of the National Security Agency program known as “Upstream,” in which the intelligence agency collects and monitors internet communications without obtaining search warrants. Classified details about the program were among those exposed a decade ago by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has been charged with theft of government property and violating espionage laws and lives in Russia.

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