Cybersecurity pro who cracked DNC hacks believes he foiled Russia’s original plan for stolen emails

The cybersecurity expert who solved the DNC hacks believes his revelation forced the Russians to speed up their timeline for interfering in last year’s election.

Rob Johnston led the investigation by CrowdStrike into the breach, which had been discovered seven months before but largely ignored until May 2016, and he told his story for the first time to Buzzfeed News.

Russia accuses cybersecurity experts of treasonous links to CIA

Two of Moscow’s top cybersecurity officials are facing treason charges for cooperating with the CIA, according to a Russian news report.

The accusations add further intrigue to a mysterious scandal that has had the Moscow rumour mill working in overdrive for the past week, and come not long after US intelligence accused Russia of interfering in the US election and hacking the Democratic party’s servers.

Senate To Approve Controversial Cybersecurity Bill

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Sharing of computer data on cyber threats between the private sector and U.S. government would increase under legislation expected to win Senate approval on Tuesday despite objections of privacy advocates who fear excessive government surveillance.

Two related measures won approval in the House of Representatives earlier this year and must be reconciled with the Senate bill before final legislation goes to President Barack Obama.

Cybersecurity, Encryption and the Golden Age of Surveillance

The Internet, the electronic nervous system of the planet, has changed human society, profoundly altering the way we conduct our lives. It has been a great leveler, allowing people to connect, publish and share on a global scale. You can write, shop and bank online, or organize a demonstration that could overthrow a dictatorship. But the Internet also opens us to intense monitoring, exposing our most personal, private communications to the prying eyes of corporations and government spies, not to mention criminals. One way we can protect ourselves is with encryption, which provides security for our data, allowing us to send and store digital information safely, essentially scrambling the information. In order to unscramble it, you need a key, a password. The ability of regular people to access encryption tools has prompted the governments of both the United States and the United Kingdom to propose special access to all communications. They want a master key to everyone’s digital life.

Government Wants to Improve Its Cybersecurity and Weaken Ours

Since the most successful hack ever launched against government servers compromised the personal information of more than 4.2 million government employees, the government has been scrambling to prevent it from happening again.

On June 4, the Office of Personnel Management announced it had been hacked, and officials have speculated that Chinese sources are to blame.

With FBI officials concerned about their ability to defend national security, FBI Director James Comey has called on companies such as Apple and Google to build “back doors” into encryption to protect user information from hacks but allow government agencies to access the data.

China Suspends Cooperation In Joint Task Force Over Cyberspying Charges

BEIJING (AP) — China on Tuesday warned the United States was jeopardizing military ties by charging five Chinese officers with cyberspying and tried to turn the tables on Washington by calling it "the biggest attacker of China's cyberspace."

China announced it was suspending cooperation with the United States in a joint cybersecurity task force over Monday's indictments, which accused the officers of stealing trade secrets from major American companies.

How the N.S.A. Cracked the Web

It’s been nearly three months since Edward Snowden started telling the world about the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of global communications. But the latest disclosures, by the Guardian, New York Times, and ProPublica are perhaps the most profound yet: the N.S.A. and its partner agency in the United Kingdom, the Government Communications Headquarters, possess significant capabilities to circumvent widely used encryption software in order to access private data.

Encryption poses a problem for intelligence agencies by scrambling data with a secret code so that even if they, or any other third-party, manages to capture it, they cannot read it—unless they possess the key to decrypt it or have the ability to crack the encryption scheme. Encryption has become only more pervasive in the decade since the N.S.A.’s “aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies” began in 2000. When you log into Gmail or Facebook, chat over iMessage, or check your bank account, the data is typically encrypted. This is because encryption is vital for everyday Web transactions; if for instance, you were to log in to your Gmail account using a park’s open wireless network and your username and password were transmitted in plain form, without being encrypted, your credentials could potentially be captured by anyone using that same network.

Why Iran's Hackers Might Be Scarier Than China's

May was a grim month for American cybersecurity. First, the Obama administration accused China of hacking government computers, potentially to exploit weaknesses in the US military. Then, US officials announced that hackers, believed to be sponsored by the Iranian government, had successfully broken into computer networks that run US energy companies, giving Iran the means to sabotage power plants. This week, the Washington Post reported that Chinese cyberspies had hacked more than two dozen big-name US weapons programs, including the F-35 fighter jet, an army program for downing ballistic missiles, and the Navy's Littoral Combat ship. Not all cyberthreats are equal, but one question remains: Who poses the greater danger—Chinese or Iranian hackers?

Your Information Is Not Secure

As Canadians focused last week on the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and the RCMP arrests of two men accused of plotting to attack Via Rail, the largest sustained series of privacy breaches in Canadian history was uncovered but attracted only limited attention.

Canadians have faced high-profile data breaches in the past -- Winners/HomeSense and the CIBC were both at the centre of serious breaches several years ago -- but last week, the federal government revealed that it may represent the biggest risk to the privacy of millions of Canadians as some government departments have suffered breaches virtually every 48 hours.

Security Chief's Cyberwar Testimony Seen As Veiled Threat To Enemies

As threats of a crippling cyberattack against the United States have mounted, the Obama administration has pushed repeatedly for stronger digital defenses while remaining quiet about its own hacking arsenal.

But in a rare public disclosure this week, a top general acknowledged that the United States is focused not only on playing defense on the cyber battlefield -- it is also bolstering its offense.

Gen. Keith Alexander, who runs the Pentagon's Cyber Command, told Congress on Tuesday that he is establishing 13 teams of experts to carry out cyberattacks against foreign countries that target the United States with destructive computer code.

More money for cybersecurity but risk of large-scale attack may be exaggerated, says Toews

OTTAWA— Canada’s minister of public safety has suggested that the U.S. defence secretary’s warning of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” attack on key commercial infrastructure may be an exaggeration.

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews was asked at a news conference about cyber security whether he believes Canada also faces a potential attack on its public and private networks — on the scale described by U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta.

The Outsourcing of the Cyberwar

Among certain national-security and public-policy circles, there is a growing trend to approach the challenges of cyber-security and cyber-war through the lens of the Cold War. While Cold War experiences can be useful to understand recent developments like the “militarization” of cyberspace, adopting Cold War strategies for cyber-security may do more harm than good for many reasons, not the least of which is that such a framework puts at risk Internet freedom – a value recognized at last year’s G8 summit – as it is much easier for governments, both foreign and domestic, to justify Internet censorship and citizen surveillance during times of war.

But Cold War strategies may also pose a risk to security because, in focusing on state-led conduct or state-on-state cyber-activity and conflicts, they fail to adequately address an emerging threat to cyber-security: the role of non-state actors.

Cybersecurity Legislation Gaining 'Momentum' In Congress

After introducing dozens of cybersecurity bills and holding months of hearings on threats from hackers, Congress is moving toward a vote on legislation to secure the nation's computer networks.

Thus far, more than 30 cybersecurity bills have been unveiled on Capitol Hill, emerging from a wide range of committees, including Commerce, Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said he plans to combine those proposals into comprehensive legislation and bring that bill to the Senate floor early this year. When he does, it will be the farthest that major cybersecurity legislation has ever advanced in Congress.

What that final bill will include has become increasingly clear in recent days as a draft of the legislation has circulated around Washington. Though not finalized, the legislation is similar to a White House proposal issued last May, according to people who have seen a draft of the bill.

The White House proposal calls for increasing penalties for computer hacking, giving more authority to the Department of Homeland Security to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks, offering incentives to private companies to encourage them to improve cybersecurity, and promoting information sharing about cyber threats between the public and private sectors.