National Security and Foreign Affairs
Anyone who was expecting diplomacy or nuance from Donald Trump in his United Nations speech got a jolt Tuesday morning. Trump appeared before the UN General Assembly as a commander-in-chief rattling his nuclear sabers.
Trump actually repeated aloud his Twitter referenceto North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man," telling world leaders in the most important foreign policy address so far in his presidency that: "Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself — and for his regime."
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hackers have proven just how urgently a gaping flaw in the global telecoms network, affecting what's known as Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), needs to be fixed. In a video demonstration, shown to Forbes ahead of publication today, benevolent hackers from Positive Technologies were able to take control of a Coinbase bitcoin wallet and start pilfering funds via the SS7 flaws.
Two days ago, a friend who invested in Bitcoin asked me how secure her Coinbase investment was. She had plans to put her coins in cold storage, but as a security stopgap was relying on two-factor authentication (2FA) through Coinbase, as many people do. My main question: What kind of two-factor?
House Judiciary Committee staff are wrangling over the details of a proposal to reform the National Security Agency's controversial warrantless wiretapping program, according to interviews with multiple committee members.
Three senior members — Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), ranking member John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) — have privately agreed to push for limitations on the program as a condition of reauthorizing it when it expires at the end of this year, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
On Sept. 18, Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) reintroduced legislation to establish national standards for informing consumers when their data has been hacked or breached. The Personal Data Notification and Protection Act of 2017 would require companies that use, store or access sensitive or personally identifying information for more than 10,000 people per year to notify their customers within 30 days of discovering a breach. The legislation would also designate the Federal Trade Commission as the government's coordinating agency to ensure a company's customers are properly notified.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers offered a bill Thursday to improve diplomacy on cyber issues, including by saving the State Department's beleaguered Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues.
The office, often abbreviated S/CCI, is on the chopping block in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's plans to contract and consolidate the State Department's offices.
The Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that it is investigating the massive data breach at credit reporting agency Equifax, adding the top U.S. consumer watchdog to the chorus of federal lawmakers and regulators expressing alarm over the unauthorized access of data belonging to 143 million people.
The Equifax hack is highly disturbing not only because of its massive scope, but also because of the specific type of personal data that was stolen. Credit reporting agencies are supposed to be one of our lines of defense in data security and privacy protection—and Equifax failed in its core mission. Moreover, by waiting six weeks to notify customers, Equifax robbed them of the crucial window during which they may have been able to stem some of the damage.