Security News
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday offered a $10 million reward aimed at preventing foreign interference in the November election, as the State Department accused Russia of waging an increasingly sophisticated disinformation campaign. The reward marks one of the most public signs that members of President Donald Trump's administration are taking election meddling seriously, despite anger by Trump himself over findings that Russia has assisted him.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called for a big expansion of U.S. government curbs on Chinese technology, saying that it wants to see "Untrusted Chinese apps" pulled from the Google and Apple app stores. Pompeo called out popular video app TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, which people in the U.S. use to communicate with others in the U.S. and China, as "Significant threats to the personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP content censorship." CCP refers to the Chinese Communist Party.
A court hearing held via Zoom for a US teenager accused of masterminding a stunning hack of Twitter was interrupted Wednesday with rap music and porn, a newspaper reported. The purpose of the hearing was to discuss reducing bail terms set for the 17 year old Tampa resident arrested last Friday over the hack last month of the accounts of major US celebrities.
Just hours after Professor Matt Blaze today discussed the state of election system security in America, one of the largest US voting machine makers stepped forward to say it's trying to improve its vulnerability research program. In addition to its ongoing vulnerabilities rewards program, ES&S said it will employ the services of security house Synack to bridge the gap with bounty hunters, and make its products better able to withstand attacks from the likes of state-sponsored groups.
China has accused the US of abusing its national security laws to target Chinese companies after Washington threatened to ban video-sharing app TikTok from its shores last week. On Saturday, the Trump administration vowed to "Close down" the Chinese-owned video-sharing app unless it is bought by a "Very American" company within 45 days.
"[The] FBI has high confidence that Chinese government actors are using malware variants in conjunction with proxy servers to maintain a presence on victim networks and to further network exploitation," the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Defense said in a joint advisory. The US Cyber Command has also uploaded four samples of the Taidoor RAT on the public malware repository VirusTotal to let 50+ Antivirus companies check the virus's involvement in other unattributed campaigns.
The US House of Representatives has passed a spending bill which includes a $500m election security provision. Specifically, the half-billion goes to the US Election Assistance Commission and will give states money that will be used to replace electronic voting machines with ones that provide a paper trail of results.
The US House of Representatives has passed a spending bill which includes a $500m election security provision. Specifically, the half-billion goes to the US Election Assistance Commission and will give states money that will be used to replace electronic voting machines with ones that provide a paper trail of results.
Intelligence officials confirmed in recent days that foreign actors are actively seeking to compromise the private communications of "U.S. political campaigns, candidates and other political targets" while working to compromise the nation's election infrastructure. Because of such secrecy, at least in part, foreign interference largely remains an afterthought in the 2020 contest, even as Republicans and Democrats alike concede it poses a serious threat that could fundamentally reshape the election at any moment.
President Donald Trump said Friday he will bar fast-growing social media app TikTok from the United States as American authorities have raised concerns the service could be a tool for Chinese intelligence. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump said: "As far as TikTok is concerned, we're banning them from the United States."