People

East-West prisoner exchange brings home American journalist, returns convicted Russian hackers

The swap that brings home reporter Evan Gershkovich and others will in turn send back imprisoned Russian hackers convicted for pilfering millions of dollars in schemes against U.S. targets.

Cybersecurity

Senate panel advances cyber regulatory harmonization bill

The bill aims to address overlapping cyber laws that CISOs say have caused compliance headaches.

Cybersecurity

New NSA-powered AI tool would help industry optimize cyberdefense testing

Autonomous Penetration Testing would overhaul manual work needed to check the cyber armor of firms that service the DOD community, said Cyber Command and NSA head Gen. Timothy Haugh.

Cybersecurity

NIST may not resolve vulnerability database backlog until early 2025, analysis shows

A new dashboard underscores the severity of the logjam that’s plagued the agency since February.

Cybersecurity

Summer-only sessions helped blunt CrowdStrike outage impact on US schools

K-12 school districts across the country were impacted in last week’s CrowdStrike-based IT outage, a person familiar says. The effects would have been much worse if school was in session.

Cybersecurity

FBI, Mandiant designate advanced North Korean hackers stealing US defense secrets

The group — now known as APT45 — has targeted information stored in U.S. government nuclear facilities and research institutions, as well as missile systems, uranium processing and other R&D intel.

Cybersecurity

Crowdstrike IT outage linked to update using new threat detection system

A routine update intended to enhance clients’ security capabilities clashed with a new cyberthreat classification framework rolled out in February, causing affected systems to crash.

Exclusive Cybersecurity

House lawmaker demands answers from AT&T on recent data breach

Rep. Abigail Spanberger wants AT&T’s CEO to open up about the company’s incident response plans and a reported payment to hackers in exchange for deleting the stolen data.

People

CISA executive director set to depart the agency

Brandon Wales, who temporarily led the agency after a Trump-era management shakeup, has overseen many of the recent CISA-led cyber reporting regulations, as well as coordination during major cyber incidents.

Policy

Biden looks to preserve tech, cyber legacy with veto threat

Experts see continuity in tech policy from the Biden administration to a possible Kamala Harris presidency, with possible divergence on some national security and antitrust issues.

Cybersecurity

How the CrowdStrike outage carved out new opportunities for hackers

Former U.S. officials and security practitioners are wondering how a defective CrowdStrike patch for Windows systems fell through the cracks and created more cascading security risks.

Cybersecurity

In reversal, AT&T says most FirstNet customers impacted in data breach disclosed last week

“We now believe the proportion of FirstNet numbers included in the data is similar to that of our broader customer base,” the company said in a statement.

Updated Cybersecurity

Biden briefed on CrowdStrike IT outage as multiple federal systems impacted

Social Security offices are closed for the day due to the incident. It will be “time-consuming” for all affected systems to undo the damage because the process is manual, one expert says.

Cybersecurity

New US cyber official wants ‘brutal honesty’ on industry collaboration efforts

CISA’s new cybersecurity official Jeff Greene wants to know where the agency can improve on collaboration efforts that have been previously criticized for their misdirection.

Exclusive Cybersecurity

US taps IBM for 5-year deal to boost European, Eurasian allies’ cyber posture

Officials are concerned that a lack of institution building in such nations will allow digital adversaries to gain a larger foothold in allied countries’ networks.

Artificial Intelligence

FCC to consider new protections against AI-generated robocalls next month

The proposal comes four months before the U.S. presidential election, where experts have long feared how AI may be used to misinform voters.

Cybersecurity

Dozens of federal agencies’ call data potentially exposed in AT&T breach

AT&T is a prime contractor on the government's $50 billion telecom contract vehicle and supplies infrastructure and bandwidth for the FirstNet public safety communications program.

Cybersecurity

Several DOD IT programs still don’t have a cyber strategy, watchdog finds

Cyber strategy requirements in the Defense Department’s IT business unit date back to at least 2014. A government watchdog thinks it's time for an update.

Policy

Russian influence operations ‘preeminent threat’ to November election, officials warn

Moscow appears to continue favoring Donald Trump, while other nations will aim to sow divisional chaos online or sway broader geopolitical discussions.