COKER ON THE SCENE — Amid a sea of hackers sporting every look under the sun — including a notable furry contingent — National Cyber Director Harry Coker made his first appearance at the iconic DEF CON conference over the weekend. Apart from the casual nature of the weekend, Coker used the opportunity to hear directly from a community on the front lines and offered insights into the Biden administration’s cyber priorities in a sit-down with Morning Cyber. “It’s good to get outside of Washington and talk to different people with different perspectives,” Coker said. — Technical policy appreciation: Coker mentioned a conversation he had during a tour of the villages, where someone brought up ONCD’s building blocks report from February. The person told Coker it was “unusual” for such a technical policy piece to come out of the White House — and they were grateful for it. That feedback for substantive policy work resonated strongly with Coker and suggests a growing alignment (or at least explicit acknowledgment) between policymakers and the broader cybersecurity community. — Streamlining cyber regulations: The ONCD chief also strongly backs a bipartisan bill from Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) that looks to establish an interagency committee led by the ONCD to coordinate and streamline cyber requirements across federal agencies. Coker framed the effort as both enhancing security and reducing compliance burdens for businesses and “hoping it becomes law by the end of this year.” While specific agency involvement is still being determined, you can bet CISA will be involved. — Actions incoming: Coker hinted at forthcoming efforts in the coming weeks to improve internet routing security, specifically mentioning Border Gateway Protocol as an area of focus — which addresses securing bulk internet routing. The director highlighted Resource Public Key Infrastructure as a proposed solution to enhance routing security. Coker also revealed that ONCD is working with the State Department to address the global nature of the issue. "There's no borders on the internet, and so securing capability based in the U.S. would be an improvement, but we need to secure capabilities around the globe.” He also confirmed ONCD is collaborating on a new cybersecurity executive order expected this fall, though he deferred to Anne Neuberger, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging tech, for details. He did share that they hold meetings together at least once a week. — Elephant in the room: The elections are just a couple months away, and because President Joe Biden is no longer running, there would be a definite administration change. Coker tells MC that he is a “yes” to staying on as the national cyber director in a new administration if asked. "I would do that because the importance of cybersecurity and the challenges are not going away," he said, adding that he hopes cybersecurity “remains nonpartisan, because it affects us all.” — We had to ask: Morning Cyber sat down with Coker right before the U.S. men's Olympic gold medal win in basketball on Saturday. With all things considered, we asked him the question of our time: Who is the GOAT, Michael Jordan or LeBron James? Without hesitation he pointed to his shoes. They were Jordans. DEF CON RECAP — Beyond speaking with Coker, your MC host along with Maggie spent the weekend at the DEF CON conference wandering the halls of the massive Las Vegas Convention Center and taking in the panels. Here are a few highlights: — Hello from the AI-side: The robocalls to New Hampshire voters earlier this year that used a deepfake audio of President Joe Biden’s voice urging them to skip the primary vote was “disinformation,” the state’s top election official told Voting Village attendees — and more needs to be done to fight this threat. “We’re taking the whole education component seriously, not just about AI, but the whole election process generally,” New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan told Maggie after discussing the incident during a Voting Village talk. “We have to get back to fundamentals, basic understandings of how election systems work.” It’s something the Biden administration is also keeping a close eye on. Anne Neuberger told Maggie and other reporters at DEF CON that the White House last week hosted banks, AI experts and voice actors on concerns around audio deepfakes. Neuberger said it was the second such meeting, and fed into work that Vice President Kamala Harris had done to tackle risks around the use of artificial intelligence. — White House priorities: Neuberger also previewed a new cyber executive order that the White House is working on, and said that independently, the Biden administration is working with Congress to put together legislation to secure U.S.-made AI models from being stolen by adversarial nations. — Vulnerability rebrand: During a drink and chat AMA on stage with conference founder Jeff Moss, CISA Director Jen Easterly quipped that it may be time to retire the word “vulnerability.” "We should stop calling things vulnerabilities, because it really diffuses responsibility. We should start calling them product defects,” Easterly said, aiming to refocus the conversation on vendor responsibility. The suggestion — which underlies shifting blame from cyberattackers to product quality — got a raucous applause from the room. Did somebody say Secure By Design? — Threats are alive: While most of the DEF CON villages were hosted in partitioned off sections of the vast floor space of the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Voting Village was held in a small room upstairs — and this was no random decision. Hursti, co-founder of the village, said having solid walls around the village’s voting infrastructure hacking area was essential to address threats, and helped the event’s security to better run the space. Despite this, Hursti said some of the individuals who have attempted to “incite violence” against the village online were present at DEF CON. “I know who they are,” Hursti told Maggie, noting that in the case of one man, “our security had a word with him about, ‘You’ve haven’t done anything wrong, you can stay, but we are watching you.’”
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