Cybersecurity and Cyberwarfare

Cyberattacks have been around for two decades. As President Barack Obama once feared, a cyberarms race of historic but hidden proportions has taken off. et in this arms race, the United States has often been its own worst enemy. Because our government has been so incompetent at protecting its highly sophisticated cyberweapons, those weapons have been stolen out of the electronic vaults of the National Security Agency and the CIA and shot right back at us.

In a comment to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) about potential safety issues associated with Internet-connected consumer products, staff of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection (BCP) warned that poorly secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices could pose a consumer safety hazard and outlined ways to mitigate such risks. BCP Staff submitted a response to the CPSC as part of the agency’s Request for Comments on potential safety issues and hazards associated with Internet-connected consumer products.

Apple has long positioned the iPhone as a secure device that only its owner can open. That has led to battles with law enforcement officials who want to get information off them, including a well-publicized showdown with the FBI in 2016 after Apple refused to help open the locked iPhone of a mass killer. The FBI eventually paid a third party to get into the phone, circumventing the need for Apple’s help. Since then, law enforcement agencies across the country have increasingly employed that strategy to get into locked iPhones they hope will hold the key to cracking cases.

The White House pushed back on legislative efforts to reverse President Donald Trump’s deal with China that eases penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE, helping to revive the company. White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley defended the administration's agreement to impose lessened penalties on the company, maintaining that the punishment was "massive" and "historic." “This will ensure ZTE pays for its violations and gives our government complete oversight of their future activity without undue harm to American suppliers and their workers," Gidley said.

In a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, Republican Senate leaders set up a vote for the week of June 11 that would undo the White House deal to revive Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was on Capitol Hill late June 11 to lobby against the move. But Democratic and Republican lawmakers said that an agreement had been reached to wrap into the National Defense Authorization Act an amendment that would ban ZTE from buying components from US suppliers.

Reps Ted Lieu (D-CA), Mike Bishop (R-MI), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), and Jim Jordan (R-OH) reintroduced the Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications (ENCRYPT) Act. The legislation would preempt state and local government encryption laws to ensure a uniform, national policy for the interstate issue of encryption technology.

Even as the Commerce Department was confirming a deal to remove an export ban affecting ZTE, Congress was moving to prevent government money to be used to buy ZTE equipment.

The Atlanta (GA) cyber attack has had a more serious impact on the city’s ability to deliver basic services than previously understood, a city official said at a public meeting as she proposed an additional $9.5 million to help pay for recovery costs.  Atlanta’s administration has disclosed little about the financial impact or scope of the March 22 ransomware hack, but information released at the budget briefings confirms concerns that it may be the worst cyber assault on any U.S. city.

Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler says that there was no 2014 cyberattack meant to overwhelm the agency's comment system during the net neutrality debate, as claimed by a former agency IT official in emails recently published by Gizmodo. The Gizmodo story says that in 2017, after the agency claimed to have experienced a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) taking down its comment system, agency IT chief David Bray told the media that there had been a similar attack in 2014 — and that Wheeler had decided to keep the matter quiet for fear of copycat attacks. 

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment Corporation, of Shenzhen, China (“ZTE Corporation”) and ZTE Kangxun Telecommunications Ltd. of Hi-New Shenzhen, China (“ZTE Kangxun”) (collectively, “ZTE”) has agreed to severe additional penalties and compliance measures to replace the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) denial order imposed as a result of ZTE’s violations of its March 2017 settlement agreement.