Tag Archive for: breaking

Federal Cash Help Protect School Districts From Cyberattacks, Ransomware – Breaking News, Sports, Weather, Traffic And The Best of NY

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Connecticut Desperately Trying To Hire Snow Plow DriversThe state is looking to hire about 140 drivers to address a 13% shortage.

Pandemic Food Insecurity Means Holiday Giveaways Needed This Year More Than EverThe pandemic left millions of New Yorkers hungry. A new report finds 1 in 7 city residents struggled with food insecurity, with the Bronx hit the hardest. CBS2’s Jenna DeAngelis reports.

Federal Cash Help Protect School Districts From Cyberattacks, RansomwareCyberattacks against school systems are becoming more damaging and aggressive with threats of extortion, unless ransom is paid. CBS2’s Jennifer McLogan reports.

Statue Of Thomas Jefferson Removed From City Council ChamberThe statue was taken down from its pedestal to be moved to the New York Historical Society.

Department Of Social Services Head Steven Banks To ResignSteve Banks, who originally joined the de Blasio administration as commissioner of the Human Resources Administration in 2014 and went on to lead the Department of Homeless Services as part of the joint management structure called the Department of Social Services, is resigning.

Faith Leaders Call On Newark Residents To Be Vigilant In Face Of Recent Spike In ShootingsResidents in New Jersey’s largest city are still reeling after a recent rash of gun violence. Police have increased patrols, but residents are being urged to do their part. CBS2’s Aundrea Cline-Thomas reports.

Longtime Employees Say Roosevelt Hotel Remains Shut DownThere are accusations of employee mistreatment at one of New York City’s most famous hotels. CBS2’s Jessica Moore reports.

Village Of Ossining Awarded $10 Million As Part Of Downtown Revitalization InitiativeIn popular culture it’s known as the home of Sing Sing, and the place where Don and Betty Draper lived at the start of “Mad Men.” In real life, the village of Ossining is a suburban hot spot, with a downtown that’s about to get a huge infusion of cash. CBS2’s Tony Aiello reports.

How To Gather For Thanksgiving SafelyFamilies that missed out on Thanksgiving 2020 are looking forward to gathering again. But with new…

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Proposed ‘Hack-Back’ Bill Tells DHS To Study Allowing Companies To Retaliate – Breaking Defense Breaking Defense

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A new bill could be the first step in companies being able to “hack back” at bad actors – but doing so could come with major risks, experts say. (File)

WASHINGTON: Two members of the Senate Finance Committee have introduced a bipartisan bill that instructs the Department of Homeland Security to study the “potential consequences and benefits” of allowing private companies to hack back following cyberattacks.

Sens. Steve Daines, R- Mont., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., have introduced the legislation as frustration over repeated cyberattacks against US companies has led to growing calls across the national security community and the private sector for retaliatory actions. Some, including military legal advisors, are now calling for the US to revisit its policy on military offensive cyber operations, especially in response to increasing ransomware attacks targeting the public and private sectors.

The draft Study on Cyber-Attack Response Options Act tells DHS to study “amend[ing] section 1030 of title 18, United States Code (commonly known as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act), to allow private entities to take proportional actions in response to an unlawful network breach, subject to oversight and regulation by a designated Federal agency.”

DHS’s report would provide recommendations to Congress on the “potential impact to national security and foreign affairs.” Specifically, the report would address the following issues:

  • Which federal agency or agencies would authorize “proportional actions by private entities;”
  • Level of certainty in attribution needed to authorize such acts;
  • Who would be allowed to conduct such operations and under what circumstances;
  • Which types of actions would be permissible; and
  • Required safeguards to be in place.

“The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack shows why we should explore a regulated process for companies to respond when they’re targets,” Whitehouse said in a statement to Breaking Defense. “This bill will help us determine whether that process could deter and respond to future attacks, and what guidelines American businesses should follow.” (A request for comment to Daines’s office was not returned by…

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MDA Sees EW, Cyber For Future Missile Defense – Breaking Defense Breaking Defense

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Missile Defense Agency head Vice Adm. Jon Hill

WASHINGTON: The US is moving away from a Missile Defense Strategy centered on hit-to-kill anti-ballistic missiles to a hybrid force that includes directed energy weapons and electronic warfare/cyber options, according to Vice Adm. Jon Hill, who heads the Missile Defense Agency.

“The future will be a mix of kinetic and non-kinetic, it will be a mix of hard kill and soft kill, because of where the threat is going to. The threat will drive us to do something different,” he told the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) today.

Hill would not specify exactly what kinds of ‘non-kinetic’ and ‘soft-kill’ technologies MDA might be investing in, citing secrecy restrictions, but confirmed that investments are being made.

“We are making investments in that area — most of it’s in an area where I can’t talk about here — but the future of missile defense will be different because of the threat,” he said.

DoD is about to launch a new Missile Defense Review, Hill said, with the last one released in January 2019 but actually completed in 2017. And that review will be firmly based on defending against emerging threats, he stressed.

“What you’re seeing today is not a simple ballistic missile going in, what you’re seeing are ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, aircraft, unmanned vehicles,” he said. “So, the real challenge today is how do we holistically understand that integrated air/missile defense picture, and now you go outside of just missile defense review that’s focused on the Missile Defense Agency. … You have to, by default, look at the whole threat space, and then what capabilities do we have, and what can we afford to procure over time.”

Indeed, in recent years, DoD has moved from talking about, and organizing its budget around, ballistic missile defense and the MDA budget basket. Instead, it has begun to refer to “missile defense and defeat” — a concept that includes the air defense and cruise missile defense budgets of the various services. DoD asked for a total of $8.9 billion for MDA in its fiscal 2022 budget request, and another $2.7 billion in service air and hypersonic…

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Israel’s Version of Moving Fast and Breaking Things: The New Cybersecurity Bill

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The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of Israel published a new bill in February entitled “Cybersecurity and the National Cyber Directorate.” If passed by government committee and the Knesset, this law will redefine cybersecurity governance in Israel. The PMO officially tabled an earlier version of the bill in June 2018, but that bill did not advance through the legislative process given the strong objections it raised both in the professional cybersecurity community and among other government authorities. In particular, stakeholders raised concerns about the broad scope of authority sought by the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD) under the 2018 bill. Other concerns included the lack of proper safeguards over the nature and scope of invasive “computer protection actions” taken by the INCD in response to cyberattacks, the potential for privacy infringements in the name of national security, and the interface between the activities of the INCD and other law enforcement agencies. The process of affording the INCD—which is currently a policy-setting body—with operative powers has been controversial even within Israel’s security establishment. One publicized example of this controversy was a 2017 leaked memo to the prime minister from the Mossad, the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), Israel Defense Forces and the Defense Ministry declaring their opposition to the expanding authorities of the INCD.

The new bill is an abbreviated formulation of the 2018 version and is framed as temporary legislation with a two-year sunset clause—perhaps to avoid some of the opposition that emerged in response to its earlier iteration. The PMO wants to move fast—somewhat insincerely in our view—because of increased cybersecurity risk while teleworking during the coronavirus pandemic and the associated digitization of workplaces in both the public and private sectors. A string of recent attacks on Israeli companies, which two of the authors discussed in a previous Lawfare post, also generated a sense of urgency for providing the INCD with unprecedented and controversial legal tools to respond to the new risk environment. These steps, however, come at the risk of compromising…

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