| | | | | |  | | By Martin Matishak | With help from Eric Geller Editor's Note: Weekly Cybersecurity is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro's daily Cybersecurity policy newsletter, Morning Cybersecurity. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
| | | — House Homeland Security Committee Democrats are the latest group to call for changes to DHS and its sprawling missions. — Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) is sick and tired of the Trump administration's approach, or lack thereof, to combating Covid-19 cyberattacks. — President Donald Trump's claims on Twitter aside, critical states and counties are set to certify their 2020 election results this week. HAPPY MONDAY and welcome to Morning Cybersecurity! Send your thoughts, feedback and especially tips to mmatishak@politico.com, and be sure to follow @POLITICOPro and @MorningCybersec. Full team info below. WIND OF CHANGE — House Democrats on Friday introduced legislation intended to streamline the Homeland Security Department, days after the Trump White House decapitated the leadership of the department's cyber wing. DHS "has been the face of President Trump's most extreme and politicized policies," House Homeland Security Committee chair Bennie Thomspon (D-Miss.), who proposed the reform bill with panel Democrats, said in a statement. "This has damaged the Department's ability to address its national security mission while also eroding workforce morale and the public's trust in it." The bill would make a number of topline changes, like restricting the use of "acting" officials — a nod to the fact that acting DHS head Chad Wolf, who has been in the role for over a year, and whose appointment was recently ruled unlawful. The proposed legislation also would tweak the department's cyber mission, particularly its talent pipeline. Here's the rundown of what it would do: — Require an annual report to Congress on the department's Cyber Talent Management System that details the program's performance against the previous year and the target number of cybersecurity gigs to be filled through special hiring authority.
— Authorize the DHS Secretary to establish a rotational cybersecurity research program between CISA and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
— Direct the DHS Secretary to create an intelligence and cybersecurity diversity fellowship program to recruit talent from historically Black colleges and universities and minority institutions. Earlier this month, Thompson, joined by two former Republican committee chairs, sent a letter to House leadership urging them to back an expansion of their panel's jurisdiction of DHS. That was preceded by a missive from a group of a half-dozen former DHS chiefs to Capitol Hill leaders that argued the department's digital mission would be more successful if Congress consolidated its oversight of the agency next year. With the congressional lameduck session dominated by pandemic-related issues, the reform bill will likely have to be re-introduced in the next Congress. If eventually passed, any changes would be implemented by the Biden administration. President-elect Joe Biden is reported to be considering a handful of names for the DHS post, from former homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. | | | ENOUGH IS ENOUGH — The top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee is frustrated that President Donald Trump hasn't done more to disrupt cyberattacks against organizations researching the coronavirus — and that he's fired top officials helping to defend those organizations. "It is clear these attacks have continued and that your actions thus far are insufficient to deter our adversaries," Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said in a letter to Trump sent Friday. In fact, Peters added, "your inaction has invited additional attackers. This is completely unacceptable." Hackers from all four of the U.S.' most sophisticated cyber adversaries have attempted to penetrate the networks of companies studying Covid-19 vaccines and treatments. In May, CISA and the FBI announced that Chinese operatives were trying to "identify and illicitly obtain valuable intellectual property (IP) and public health data related to vaccines, treatments, and testing from networks and personnel affiliated with COVID-19-related research." That same month, Reuters reported that Iranian hackers had targeted employees of the pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences, which is involved in Covid-19 treatment research. In July, the U.S. and its allies announced that the Russian hacker group "Cozy Bear," aka APT29, had tried to steal information about "Covid-19 vaccine research and development." And in mid-November, Microsoft revealed that Russian and North Korean hackers had targeted — and, in some cases, breached — "leading pharmaceutical companies and vaccine researchers in Canada, France, India, South Korea, and the United States." Peters laced into Trump for firing top officials at CISA, which works with the FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide security assistance to high-profile companies in the health-care sector. "CISA, with the Department of Defense, is responsible for the cybersecurity of your own Operation Warp Speed to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and you've removed its top three cybersecurity leaders," Peters wrote. "The removal of these individuals invites attacks from our adversaries based on a perception of instability, rather than prevent them." To stem the tide of cyberattacks on virus researchers, Peters wrote, the Trump administration should make the health-care sector a priority for CISA and U.S. Cyber Command's defensive work; deploy "all levers of national power" to discourage adversaries from hacking health-care firms; request more cybersecurity funding in future coronavirus relief bills; and beef up HHS' cyber defenses. | 
Drew Angerer/Getty Images | | | | GET CERTIFIED — President Trump may be a one-man conspiracy theory factory on Twitter, but more than two weeks after the 2020 race was called — and no major hacks or voter fraud uncovered — a handful of key states and counties are due to certify their election results. The Michigan State Board of Canvassers is scheduled to meet on Monday to certify the state's results. The board's certification of election results is what triggers electors to be selected, which is what gets sent to the Electoral College. Pennsylvania counties must finalize their results today, which will be followed by a certification from Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat. She has no statutory deadline to issue a statewide certification, but is expected to move quickly. If both states certify next week, Trump would have no electoral path to prevent a Biden win — even if the president's efforts succeed in other states, like Arizona, Nevada or Wisconsin. Arizona counties also must finalize their results today. Former CISA chief Chris Krebs, who is experiencing something of a renaissance on Twitter since being fired last week, weighed in on the president abruptly dumping a member of his legal team, Sidney Powell, who made unsupported claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, vowing to "release the kraken" of evidence, only to refuse to produce it when asked. "So where are we on the Kraken now? The Kraken claims are and have always been pure #disinfo," Krebs tweeted. "So any claims of vote count manipulation were nonsense from day 1. #WeArePerseus"
| | | | TRACK THE TRANSITION : President-elect Biden has named his chief of staff and several other key White House positions. What's next? Treasury secretary? Secretary of State? These and other crucial staffing decisions made in the coming days send clear-cut signals about President-elect Biden's administration agenda and priorities. Transition Playbook is the definitive guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history. Written for political insiders, it tracks the appointments, people, and the emerging power centers of the new administration. Track the transition. Subscribe today. | | | | |
| | | NOT THAT KIND OF SERVICE ECONOMY — Romanian police arrested two people for allegedly running a malware encryption service that helped more than 1,500 cyber criminals sneak past antivirus software, Europol announced . The services, dubbed CyberSeal and Dataprotector, sold for $40 to $300. The two suspects had been selling their services since 2010; CyberSeal launched in 2014 and Dataprotector in 2015. The pair also allegedly offered customers access to a platform to test their malware against antivirus tools for just seven dollars. European law enforcement agencies and the FBI collaborated on the arrest. | | | FOLLOW THE NEWS — Cyber researchers should track geopolitical events and the themes around them to boost their odds of identifying and uncovering active online campaigns, including state-sponsored ones, according to Joe Slowik, senior security researcher at DomainTools. Slowik, a former U.S. Navy cyber operator, detailed how by identifying a phishing document related to recent tensions in the Caucasus, the company's researchers were able to detect and analyze a complete campaign stretching from December 2019 through November 2020. "While the victims of this campaign appear geographically limited, largely focusing on Ukraine and Azerbaijan, the lessons drawn from the analysis of both the malicious documents and related network infrastructure can be used to further defense against similar types of attacks," according to Slowik. "By monitoring for these types of event-specific incidents "analysts can gain insight" into emerging malicious activity and "deploy defensive countermeasures shortly after discovery." | | | | DON'T MISS THE MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF HEALTH SUMMIT 2020: POLITICO will feature a special edition Future Pulse newsletter at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit. The newsletter takes readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of global health industry leaders and innovators determined to confront and conquer the most significant health challenges. Covid-19 has exposed weaknesses across our health systems, particularly in the treatment of our most vulnerable communities, driving the focus of the 2020 conference on the converging crises of public health, economic insecurity, and social justice. Sign up today to receive exclusive coverage from December 7–9. | | | | | TWEET OF THE DAY — A reminder of a fundamental challenge. | | | — KrebsOnSecurity: GoDaddy Employees Used in Attacks on Multiple Cryptocurrency Services. — Apple announced its mobile operating system will get a new privacy feature opposed by the advertising industry. — Opinion: Voting Machine Conspiracy Theories Harm U.S. Cybersecurity. — President-elect Biden's team must fend for itself when it comes to cybersecurity. — InsideCybersecurity: Lockheed Martin wants details from suppliers on compliance with current and upcoming DoD cybersecurity regulations. That's all for today. Stay in touch with the whole team: Eric Geller ( egeller@politico.com, @ericgeller); Bob King (bking@politico.com, @bkingdc); Martin Matishak (mmatishak@politico.com, @martinmatishak); and Heidi Vogt (hvogt@politico.com, @heidivogt). | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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