Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) announced he has placed a hold on the nomination of Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly for another term until Commissioner O’Rielly publically commits to vote to overturn the current Ligado Order. Chairman Inhofe said, "Over the past few months, I have sent letters, held hearings and called countless officials to highlight what we all know to be true: the FCC’s Ligado Order is flawed and will lead to significant harm to our military and the thousands of individuals and businesses that rely on GPS.

Top congressional Democrats warned in a cryptic letter that a foreign power was using disinformation to try to interfere in the presidential election and the activities of Congress, and demanded a prompt briefing by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to warn every member of Congress. While the letter writers did not specify the threat, officials familiar with a classified addendum attached to it said the Democrats’ concerns touched on intelligence related to a possible Russian-backed attempt to smear the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. They contend that the

At this time, we believe attackers targeted certain Twitter employees through a social engineering scheme. What does this mean? In this context, social engineering is the intentional manipulation of people into performing certain actions and divulging confidential information. The attackers successfully manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s internal systems, including getting through our two-factor protections. As of now, we know that they accessed tools only available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter accounts.

The Federal Communications Commission took further steps to protect the nation’s communications networks from security risks. Specifically, the FCC began integrating portions of the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act (Secure Networks Act), which was enacted in March 2020, into its existing supply chain rulemaking proceeding.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US will impose visa restrictions on Chinese technology firms, the latest move expected to strain relations between Washington and Beijing. “State Department will impose visa restrictions on certain employees of Chinese tech companies like Huawei, that provide material support to regimes engaging in human rights violations and abuses globally,” Sec Pompeo said.

An appropriations bill that would fund the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission includes language that would limit President Donald Trump's effort to regulate social media, as well as provide billions to help better identify and close the digital divide, and use secure technology to do so. The bill, which includes funding for a number of agencies and programs, has $67,040,000,000 in "emergency infrastructure investments to respond to the economic collapse related to the coronavirus," most of which ($61,040,000,000) would go to pay for expanding broadband in unserve

Apparently, Britain will bar new deployments of Huawei equipment in its fledgling high-speed 5G network, in what is a major blow to the Chinese technology giant and a significant win for the Trump administration, which has been pressing allies to shun the firm. The British decision, expected to be announced July 14, is part of a growing shift away from China in the global 5G competition, especially among advanced democracies increasingly concerned that the firm’s ties to the Communist government create an unacceptable security risk.

The respective parties have filed their opening briefs in Chinese telecom Huawei's challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's initial determination that its technology is a national security risk and must be excluded from broadband subsidies — and likely ripped and replaced from existing networks. The FCC voted unanimously on June 30 to affirm its initial designation that Huawei (and ZTE) are suspect, which means no carrier can use tech from either company to build out broadband and be eligible for any of the government's billions of dollars in Universal Service Fund subsidies for

The Commerce Department, as statutorily obligated by a recent law, sought feedback on how to best implement an administration 5G security strategy and has now posted all its comments. Around 80 parties weighed in, from the city of New York to companies like AT&T, Qualcomm and Ligado.