Security News

The United States Department of Justice has revealed it has indicted a National Security Agency employee for sharing top secret national security information with an unnamed person who worked in the private sector. According to a DoJ announcement and the indictment, an NSA staffer named Mark Unkenholz "Held a TOP SECRET/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance and had lawful access to classified information relating to the national defense."

FCC adds Kaspersky, Chinese companies to list of potential threats to national security. The Federal Communications Commission's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau has added three companies to the list of communications equipment and services that pose a threat to national security through access to user information.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Friday moved to add Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab to the "Covered List" of companies that pose an "Unacceptable risk to the national security" of the country. Also added alongside Kaspersky were China Telecom Corp and China Mobile International USA. The block list includes information security products, solutions, and services supplied, directly or indirectly, by the company or any of its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, or affiliates.

The United Stations Federal Communications Commission has labelled Kaspersky, China Mobile, and China Telecom as threats to national security. Kaspersky is the first non-Chinese company to be added to the FCC's list, but the agency did not tie its decision to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The Federal Communications Commission added Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky to its Covered List, saying it poses unacceptable risks to U.S. national security. Kaspersky services covered by this decision include information security products, solutions, and services supplied by Kaspersky or any linked companies, including subsidiaries or affiliates.

In this interview with Help Net Security, Rowland Corr, Director of National Security Intelligence at AdaptiveMobile Security, explains how mobile networks can be leveraged as part of a cyber warfare strategy, why is this a growing national concern, and how to implement defences against such sophisticated attacks. Where nations face the threat of overt military attack, mobile telecom networks can potentially be used by an attacker to further amplify advantage in offensive military operations as a force multiplier by enhancing real-time targeting capabilities.

The United States' National Security Division will wind up its "China Initiative" - an effort to combat what then-attorney general Jeff Sessions described in 2018 as "Systematic and calculated threats" posed by Beijing-backed economic espionage. "We have heard concerns from the civil rights community that the 'China Initiative' fueled a narrative of intolerance and bias," Olsen stated in a speech delivered at the National Security Institute and George Mason University.

The Federal Communications Commission has revoked China Unicom Americas' license, one of the world's largest mobile service providers, over "Serious national security concerns." China Unicom Americas is the largest foreign subsidiary of China Unicom, a Chinese state-owned telecom company.

President Joe Biden signed a national security memorandum on Wednesday to increase the security of national security systems part of critical US government networks used in military and intelligence activities when storing or transferring classified info. "Modernizing our cybersecurity defenses and protecting all federal networks is a priority for the Biden Administration, and this National Security Memorandum raises the bar for the cybersecurity of our most sensitive systems," the White House said.

Discussions on this topic took place during the Open Source Software Security Summit convened by the Biden administration on Thursday. Participants focused on three topics: preventing security defects and vulnerabilities in open source software, improving the process for finding security flaws and fixing them, and shrinking the time needed to deliver and deploy fixes.