News: World leaders vow secure critical systems at G-7

Monday, May 22, 2023

World leaders vow secure critical systems at G-7

May 22, 2023

Presented by Resilience

Driving the day

— President Joe Biden and other world leaders promised to zero in on cybersecurity and secure critical technologies from competition with China during a series of high-profile meetings this weekend.

HAPPY MONDAY, and welcome to Morning Cybersecurity! I’m your host, Maggie Miller, standing in for John today while he, presumably, enjoys the absolutely unbeatable weather May is giving us here in D.C. Let the season of rooftop parties and forcing friends with pools to invite you over begin!

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The International Scene

ALL TOGETHER NOW — President Joe Biden and other world leaders over the weekend committed to a series of promises to enhance the cybersecurity of critical systems, along with working to stem Chinese technological influence in the standards-setting place.

At the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, Biden and the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom strongly alluded to current Chinese data practices that require companies headquartered there to turn over data, something that have hurt companies like telecom giant Huawei and social media app TikTok.

“We express concern about regulations that unjustifiably require companies to localize data or those that allow governments to access data without appropriate safeguards and protections,” the G-7 leaders said in a joint statement on Saturday. “We will therefore deepen our strategic dialogue to seek to counter malicious practices in the digital sphere.”

As part of this, the G-7 leaders launched the Coordination Platform on Economic Coercion, which in part aims to stem the tide of Chinese theft of critical technologies. Further, following concerns around enhanced Chinese influence around setting global standards for emerging technologies, G-7 leaders vowed to “collectively support the development of open, voluntary and consensus-based standards that will shape the next generation of technology.”

— But wait, there’s more: The G-7 was not the only international group that met in Hiroshima. Biden met with other leaders of the Quad alliance — a strategic security agreement between the U.S., Australia, Japan and India — on the sidelines of the summit. Among a wide array of issues, the leaders agreed in a joint statement to foster “a more secure cyberspace” and “an international digital economy that works for everyone.”

They pointed to developments in the past year through collaboration of Quad nations, including the Quad Cyber Challenge that brought together around 85,000 people in the Indo-Pacific to raise cybersecurity awareness and training numbers, along with new software security principles.

“Quad partners will continue collaborating to enhance regional capacity and resilience to cyber incidents and threats,” the leaders said.

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Surveillance

BAD NEWS FOR SECTION 702 — Last week’s revelations about the misuse of Section 702 surveillance authorities by the FBI are further straining efforts to renew the critical authorities prior to when they run out at the end of the year.

A number of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including notable top Democrats, were seething following the public declassification on Friday of reports that showed the FBI mined data collected under the surveillance authority to look into whether protestors arrested at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 were connected to terrorists, investigate those involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and look into donors to a 2020 congressional campaign, among other issues.

"The FBI says that they have instituted new procedures to make this kind of abuse impossible,” House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Friday. “They have made that promise before. Without significant changes to the law to prevent this abuse, I will oppose the reauthorization of this authority."

Senate Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a longtime critic of Section 702 authorities, tweeted Friday that FBI Director Christopher Wray “told us we can sleep well at night because of the FBI’s so-called FISA reforms. But it just keeps getting worse.”

— Nothing to see here: The two reports, submitted in April 2022 but only made public on Friday, detailed how the FBI misused Section 702 — which allows the government to surveil electronic communications by foreign nationals outside the country, but also hoovers up information on any communications those people have with individuals in the United States.

In total, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court found that the FBI misused data collected under Section 702 close to 300,000 times in 2020 and some of 2021. These incidents all occurred before the FBI pursued an overhaul of how it used the information collected under Section 702, resulting in declining incidents of misuse.

— Pretty please: U.S. intelligence officials, including Wray, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Attorney General Merrick Garland have been strongly making the case in recent months for Congress to reauthorize the law, which has been used to stop ransomware attacks and terrorist plots, among other incidents. National security adviser Jake Sullivan described the law as a “cornerstone of U.S. national security.”

Not all top officials were quite so pessimistic about Section 702. Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement provided to POLITICO on Friday that he “remains committed” to working to renew Section 702 authorities, though “additional changes” are needed to prevent misuse.

Critical Infrastructure

MIND THE CYBERATTACK — On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transport Authority is reevaluating its email system days after news emerged that an individual in Russia breached WMATA systems.

Last week, officials at the capital’s metro system said internal emails systems were potentially breached — raising the specter that hackers could easily take aim at critical metro lines in the United States.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Office of the Inspector General released a report last week detailing how an ex-contractor logged into its systems from Russia in January. The new investigation is seeking to determine what reforms need to be made to stop this from occurring again, in particular looking at changing the current practice of deleting emails after six months, stymying any investigations.

— Lights were blinking red: The breach came on the heels of years of warnings over a lack of cyber safety at the metro authority. Then-WMATA Inspector General Geoff Cherrington warned in 2019 that WMATA systems and cars were vulnerable to cyberattacks, and the report from current WMATA OIG Rene Febles found that WMATA has failed to implement at least 51 IT and cybersecurity recommendations in recent years.

“WMATA must immediately establish security controls for restricting access to its data at all levels,” Febles wrote.

But WMATA is not alone in trying to contend with threats in cyberspace. New York City’s metro system was breached by suspected Chinese hackers in 2020, while Iranian hackers were indicted in 2018 for attacking the Colorado Department of Transportation. Concerns have further been raised by lawmakers over the potential for a Chinese company to build new rail cars for Washington, D.C. and New York City transit systems.

— Stay tuned: Lawmakers have said they will be monitoring the situation in the nation’s capital as it evolves, including Senate Intelligence Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) and leaders of the House Oversight Committee.

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Vulnerabilities

NEW APT ON THE BLOCK — Researchers at cybersecurity company Kaspersky found that an advanced persistent threat group — previously unknown and discovered by Kaspersky in March — is targeting individuals, diplomatic and research organizations across Ukraine. This involved taking screenshots and recording audio from impacted devices, and Kaspersky researchers found that the APT group bore similarities to other cyber operations that have been active in Ukraine for several years.

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