Amidst the usual calls for government reform and corporate responsibility, the Cyberspace Solarium Commission makes a surprisingly hard-headed case for old-school deterrence.
By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.In April 2018 the government hit a high point of 725,000 delayed clearances. Today, the number has dipped below 360,000. In May, we reported that would-be federal employees and defense contractors waited an average of 221 days for a Secret clearance and 534 days for a Top Secret clearance.
By Colin ClarkWhat are we going to do about the Russian hacks that have wrought havoc across the entire political spectrum and are rapidly shifting from being an embarrassment to, possibly, being strategically crippling? The body count of ruined careers aside, sizeable harm is being done to our political process and a likely intelligence loss as foreign actors rummage…
By John QuiggWASHINGTON: Hacks are hard to do damage assessments on. Just ask Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper about the Chinese theft of data from the Office of Personnel Management. “We don’t actually know what was actually exfiltrated,” Clapper told several hundred people at Georgetown University’s Healy Hall today. Why don’t we really know if 5.6 million fingerprints — or…
By Colin ClarkGEOINT: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper identified China today as “the leading suspect” in the two sweeping hacks of the Office of Personnel Management, one day after NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers dodged the issue. In Clapper’s first answer to a question about who is responsible for the OPM hacks, he laid the blame squarely on China. “On the…
By Colin ClarkGEOINT: NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers pointedly declined today to confirm whether China was behind the massive Office of Personnel Management hacks. “So what really makes you think that, as the head of NSA and Cyber Com, I’m going to talk with you about this,” he told a reporter here today. Breaking D readers can…
By Colin ClarkChinese government-backed hackers continue to penetrate and steal information from large US personnel data repositories. Our government gnashes its teeth and may issue a statement. These attacks are not about grabbing credit cards or frequent flyer miles, creating mayhem with political messaging, or pure mischief. These infiltrations by the Chinese are all about an industrial scale preparation…
By John Quigg
The WannaCry worm proves that our collective response to cyber threat continues to churn ineffectively in the same futile rut while threats multiply and grow increasingly serious by the day. Channeling Hobbes, government must assume the role of the Leviathan, establishing a monopoly on cyber violence, in this nascent global commons. We must get behind a…
By John Quigg