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email Russia’s Latest Hack Shows How Useful ‘Criminal Groups’ Are to the Kremlin
Russian coders have little choice but to work with their government, which in turn denies any knowledge of their activities. That’s why hacking activity shows no sign of slowing.
The Russian criminals who orchestrated the SolarWinds hack have gained access to a USAID online-marketing account, enabling the group to send official-looking emails to a new swath of potential victims, Microsoft said Friday. Russian officials quickly denied involvement but analysts say that just illustrates how the Kremlin uses ostensibly private groups to create deniability, a problem likely to continue.
Frank Cilluffo, commissioner of the Cyber Solarium Commission, noted public-private partnership as a priority for the second iteration of commission recommendations. (Auburn University)
The Cyber Solarium Commission, a working group of lawmakers and cybersecurity experts, released its first report last year. In total, 27 of its recommendations passed into law as part of the Defense Authorization Act. And yet, Solarium commissioner Frank Cilluffo said there’s still a lot more work to do for the second round.
“This year we obviously recognize that cyber goes far beyond national security,” he told an audience at the RSA Conference Tuesday.
Cilluffo, director of Auburn University’s McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security and former special adviser on homeland security for President George W. Bush, rattled off a list of priorities from the Solarium report that either had not been taken up by lawmakers or had stalled.
The Democrats on Wednesday sent a letter to the FTC calling for the commission to launch an investigation into the Silicon Valley giant’s app store, citing recent studies that suggest apps that infringe on children s privacy, in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), are “rampant on the Google Play Store.”
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The letter follows a similar push from two advocacy groups, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), for the FTC to look into the alleged COPPA violations.
APPLE TO (FINALLY) LAUNCH UPDATE: Apple will launch its operating system update that will include a feature that will limit the reach of targeted ads “next week,” the company said Tuesday.
FCW Insider: April 22, 2021 -- FCW fcw.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from fcw.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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“This Congress, the House Foreign Affairs Committee aims to prioritize efforts to reassert American leadership on a variety of issues,” Meeks said. “I can t think of any issue that is more timely than ensuring American leadership is prepared to confront the growing national security challenge in cyberspace.”
“This feels long overdue,” McCaul said on the House floor. “To me, it is the last piece in terms of our cyber role in the federal government, now taking it to the international stage with our allies around the world.”
Langevin said in a statement released following the Tuesday vote that he hoped the Senate would “act with the same speed” as the House did in passing the legislation.