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Microsoft acquires CyberX to bolster Azure IoT security – Internet of Things News – IoT Tech News

Microsoft has announced the acquisition of IoT security specialist CyberX to beef up Azure IoTs capabilities and help customers assess their risk profile across industrial environments.

CyberX, which will complement existing Azure IoT security offerings, aims to solve two specific challenges, according to a blog post from Microsoft announcing the news. Customers need greater visibility into the IoT devices already connected to their networks, as well as manage security on brownfield devices which have been difficult to secure due to legacy protocols.

With CyberX, customers can discover their existing IoT assets, and both manage and improve the security posture of those devices, wrote Michal Bravermen-Blumenstyk, CVP and CTO of cloud and AI security and Sam George, CVP of cloud and AI Azure IoT in a blog. Customers can see a digital map of thousands of devices across a factory floor or within a building and gather information about their asset profile and vulnerabilities.

Gaining this visibility is not only critical for understanding where security risks may exist and then mitigating those risks, but it is also a fundamental step to securely enable smart manufacturing, smart grid, and other digitisation use cases across production facilities and the supply chain, they added.

From the CyberX perspective, Omer Schneider, co-founder and CEO, said he was thankful to the companys customers and investors, and assessed the next steps. By joining forces with Microsoft, we will rapidly scale our business and technology to securely enable digital transformation for many more organisations, said Schneider.

The seeds of Microsofts $5 billion investment in IoT, announced two years ago, continue to bear fruit, as Braverman-Blumenstyk and George explained. While the benefits of IoT are well established and significant, one of the biggest hubrldes for customers is securing IoT devices both for new digitisation initiatives as well as for legacy operational technology and industrial control system environments, they wrote.

Research from Counterpoint at the start of this month found Microsoft to be the leader in IoT platforms. The Redmond company came top or joint top in almost all areas of analysis, including integration and scalability, ecosystem growth, and application enablement.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Interested in hearing industry leaders discuss subjects like this?Attend the co-located5G Expo,IoT Tech Expo,Blockchain Expo,AI & Big Data Expo, andCyber Security & Cloud Expo World Serieswith upcoming events in Silicon Valley, London, and Amsterdam.

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Microsoft acquires CyberX to bolster Azure IoT security - Internet of Things News - IoT Tech News

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Partner Content: ESET and Spire Technology on why you need a Password Manager – PCR-online.biz

With an average of 200 online accounts to create passwords for and over 75 million internet-connected devices worldwide, using a Password Manager is a modern necessity.

When it comes to basic cybersecurity tips youve no doubt heard the standard advice many, many times: install antivirus, dont click on dodgy links, dont spend your life savings to deposed foreign royalty, dont install suspect software and so on.

Near the top of any list worth its salt, theres bound to be dont reuse passwords on multiple sites. Which, like all the other tips mentioned, is great advice but much easier said than done. An average person in the UK could have roughly 200 online accounts registered to a single email address.

Memorising that many unique passwords isnt something that anyone can be reasonably expected to do, which is exactly where a Password Manager, like the one included in ESET Smart Security Premium, comes in.

As ESET Security Specialist Jake Moore explains, Password Managers are designed to do the heavy lifting when it comes to creating, storing and protecting your most important accounts.

From online clothes shops to your daily news, everything we do on the internet requires a password, how are you honestly expected to remember them? Well, theres an easy way.

Password Managers enable you to do exactly that: every single login can have a complex, unique password and you dont have to remember it. You dont actually need to make it up either, the manager will do it for you.

If you have a digital life then a Password Manager will help you organise it. Once youve got it up and running its virtually hassle free and an absolute must these days.

That isnt all Password Managers are capable of either: you can securely store credit card or bank information, so you dont have to rummage around in your wallet to find your payment details.

Any important information you may need but want to store securely can be put into a Password Manager and all you have to remember is a single ultra-secure master password.

ESETs flagship software: ESET Smart Security Premium

ESET Smart Security Premium not only features an easy to use comprehensive Password Manager but also offers multi-layered anti-malware protection for all internet users, built on ESETs trademark best balance of detection, speed and usability.

As well as award-winning ESET Antivirus and Antispyware, encrypt your files and USB storage devices, protect your webcam from misuse and easily check the security of your home Wi-Fi router and vulnerability of your smart devices connected to it.

You can pay online and access your web-based crypto-wallets more safely, locate and secure your missing laptop and get a customised monthly Security Report. With ESETs improved License Manager you can manage your connected devices and licenses via my.eset.com.

ESETs award-winning cybersecurity: online protection for any level of user

The latest versions of ESET NOD32 Antivirus, ESET Internet Security and ESET Smart Security Premium offer fortified multilayered protection, enhanced IoT protection, product referral and a new security report feature. Users can rely on the best balance of speed, detection and usability acknowledged by multiple testing bodies to protect their constantly-connected devices.

It is predicted that by 2025, there will be over 75 billion connected devices worldwide from smart home devices to e-health gadgets this poses a real threat to cybersecurity. As more connected devices are introduced to everyday life, the amount of personal and sensitive data shared increases, as does the number of entry points into networks.

Hackers will use this rise in the number of internet-connected devices to their advantage and users, therefore, cannot afford to neglect taking security measures. The addition of IoT protection to our home user product suite means our customers can be safe in the knowledge that their devices, and the home routers they connect to, are properly secured, says Matej Kritofk, Product Manager at ESET.

Similar to previous years, to fight all these threats users can choose from ESET NOD32 Antivirus for basic protection, ESET Internet Security with additional layers of security on top of the basic anti-malware solution, and ESET Smart Security Premium for users seeking the most advanced protection and features on the market. This includes technologies such as Password Manager and Banking Protection.

Built on machine learning and three decades of knowledge all ESET products run unnoticed in the background. The key offering provides users with comfortable and ultra-fast scanning without impacting the operating system or their experience.

We built our products to provide an advantage over native Windows protection to show users how a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity can battle the toughest of threats out there, said Kritofk.

The latest version offers new features as well as improvements to existing ones including:

Security report provides users with an overview of what ESETs solution has been actively detecting, blocking and mitigating in the background, while users computers run smoothly without any performance lag. Users can choose from five pre-set items based on user-given priorities and gain insight into other features such as Secure Data, Password Manager, Anti-theft or Parental Control.

Improved installation users save up to 40% on the installation time based on the set up of the device. The installation of new ESET products will now only take a couple of seconds.

Connected home monitor now allows users to test router-connected smart devices for vulnerabilities such as weak passwords and suggests possible fixes. It also allows users to scan for port vulnerabilities, known firmware vulnerabilities, malicious domains, weak or default router password and malware infections.

To find out more about ESET Smart Premium Security and our other award-winning products, visit our Premium Distribution Partner, Spire Technology https://www.spire.co.uk/vendor_stores.php?vendor=ESET&store_ID=105

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Google is on a mission to stop you from reusing passwords – The Verge

Passwords are one of the worst things on the internet, Mark Risher, Googles senior director for account security, identity, and abuse told The Verge. Though theyre essential for security and to help people log in to many apps and websites, theyre one of the primary, if not the primary, ways that people actually end up getting compromised.

Its a strange thing for a Google security executive to say because the last time you logged into Gmail, you probably typed in a password. But the company has been trying to nudge users away from the model for years, or at least minimize the damage. And in the coming weeks, one of Googles quietest tools in that fight the Password Checkup feature will be getting a higher profile, as it joins the Security Checkup dashboard built into every Google account.

Risher is right to be concerned. Though you can use a tool like a password manager to help keep track of your logins, a lot of people just end up reusing passwords for many accounts. Fifty-two percent of people reuse the same password for multiple accounts, according to the results of a poll published in February 2019 by Google and polling firm Harris. Thirteen percent of people reuse that password for all of their accounts, that poll found. And Microsoft said in 2019 that 44 million Microsoft accounts used logins that had been leaked online.

While reusing passwords can be one way to remember a complex word, phrase, or combination of letters, numbers, and symbols that you think no one will ever be able to guess, the practice can put your personal information in danger. If that reused password gets leaked as part of a data breach, hackers could then have the key to many of your other online accounts no matter how complex the phrase is.

We know from other research weve done in the past that people whove had their data exposed by a data breach are 10 times more likely to be hijacked than a person thats not exposed by one of these breaches, said Kurt Thomas, a member of Googles anti-abuse and security research team.

Google has been trying to help users build better password habits for some time, slowly but surely. For years, the company has offered a built-in password manager in Google Accounts on Chrome and Android that can save your passwords and autofill them on websites and apps, for example.

But over the past year or so, Google has also been working to help people proactively make better passwords with Password Checkup. The tool checks logins against a database of 4 billion leaked credentials, seeing if the password youre typing in matches one thats already leaked. It launched first as a Chrome extension in February 2019, and Google baked it into Google Accounts in October and into Chrome in December.

Its not a new idea, but Google is uniquely well-positioned to offer something like Password Checkup. The company has access to billions of passwords and the scale to roll out Password Checkup to billions of users in a way that integrates with account security tools on which many people already rely.

Figuring out how to let Password Checkup flag compromised credentials in a privacy-respecting way was a tough technical problem that required a combined effort from both Google and Stanford. The challenge was finding a way to automatically check a users credentials against a database of breached logins without revealing that information to Google or giving the user access to the whole database, all while scaling that solution to Googles huge user base, researchers from both organizations told me.

To do so, Google stores a hashed and encrypted version of every known username and password exposed by a data breach. Whenever you log into an account, Google will send a hashed and encrypted version of your login info against that database. That way, Google cant see your password, and you cant see Googles list of known-compromised logins. If Google detects a match, Google will show an alert recommending that you change your password for that site.

Google gets compromised logins from multiple different sources and trusted partners, Thomas said, including underground forums where password dumps are openly shared. We have an ethical policy that we will never pay criminals for stolen data, he continued. But just by virtue of how these markets work, very often, [stolen data] will bubble up and become available. Using personas Google has in those marketplaces, the company can acquire the data, he said.

Password Checkup took about two to three years from inception to having it appear in many Google products, according to Thomas. Down the line, Google wants to have Security Checkup email you when it detects that a stored login has been compromised in a data breach, which the company plans to launch in the coming months. And later this year, Google aims to let people use Password Checkup in Chrome even if they arent logged into a Google account.

Google isnt the only company to offer some kind of password-checking functionality. Paid password manager 1Password recommends changing weak or duplicated passwords and also offers Watchtower, which checks your logins against Troy Hunts Have I Been Pwned database of more than 9 billion compromised accounts and flags any matches. And Apple announced yesterday that its next version of Safari will have a password-monitoring tool that appears to work similarly to Password Checkup.

But Google has an advantage in helping people with their passwords thanks to its massive scale. And tools like Password Checkup and the built-in password manager ladder up to a broader goal to make online security easier for users.

What I like security to be and what I think [Password Checkup] is a good example of is, how do you make it easier for regular people to do the right thing? Googles VP of security engineering Royal Hansen told The Verge. Its not about alerting you with more and more problems, he said. Its about making it easier for you to do, frankly, the most basic step.

Update June 23rd, 4:06PM ET: Added context about where Password Checkup is already available.

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Google is on a mission to stop you from reusing passwords - The Verge

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Internet of Things (IoT) Security Market to Witness Robust Expansion Throughout the Forecast Period 2020 2025 – 3rd Watch News

The Internet of Things (IoT) Security market report, recently added by Market Study Report, LLC, examines the industry in terms of the global expanse, highlighting the present & future growth potential of each region as well as consolidated statistics. The study also presents a precise summary of the competitive milieu, key developments, and application landscape of the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market based on the impact of the financial and non-financial facades of the industry.

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According to the latest research report, the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market emerges as one of the most proactive business verticals. This research report anticipates this space to garner substantial returns over the forecast period, on account of the broad range of driving forces that is set to transform the market outlook throughout the projected duration. An essence of these driving forces, in conjunction with and excess of additional dynamics related to the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market, such as the threats that are prevalent across this market as well as the growth opportunities, have also been emphasized in the report.

One of the key pointers that makes the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market report worth a buy is the extensive overview it delivers regarding the competitive landscape of the industry. Based on the competitive hierarchy, the study expertly segments the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market into The major players covered in Internet of Things (IoT) Security are:, Cisco Systems, ARM Holdings, Symantec Corporation, Intel Corporation, Infineon Technologies, IBM Corporation, Kaspersky Lab, Digicert, Trend Micro, Gemalto NV, Trustwave, CheckPoint Software Technologies, INSIDE Secure SA, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Sophos Plc and Advantech. These companies have been competing with one another in a bid to attain a successful status in the global market.

A brief outline of the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market scope includes:

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The report provides enough data regarding the market share that all of these companies presently account for throughout this vertical, alongside the market share that they are expected to acquire over the estimated period. The study also expounds on particulars related to the product manufactured by each of these companies, that would help industry entrants and key stakeholders develop their competitive analysis and strategy portfolios. Additionally, their decision-making process is set to become more convenient due to the fact that the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market report also highlights an essence of the trends in product pricing and the revenue margins of the major players in the industry.

Important question regarding the regional spectrum of the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market covered by the report:

Some common questions the report answers with regards to the segmentation of the Internet of Things (IoT) Security market

Key takeaways from the study:

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Development Trend of Analysis of Internet of Things (IoT) Security Market

Marketing Channel

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Marking the 30th Anniversary of the Internet and Cybersecurity Treaty – CircleID

Richard E. Butler and the author in the secretariat workroom of the Old Melbourne City Hall writing the cybersecurity treaty provisions, December 1988. Photo courtesy of the author's legal assistant, Laina Raveendran-Greene.

Next week, July 1, 2020 marks the 30th anniversary of one of the most significant treaty instruments in modern times. On 1 July 1990, the Melbourne Treaty came into force as the first and only global treaty that enabled worldwide internets and mobile networks to exist, together with the cybersecurity provisions designed to protect those infrastructures. The achievement remains as an enduring tribute to Richard Edmund Butler of Australia who was one of the most influential, and best-loved Secretaries-General of the ITU.

Dick Butler as he was known by everyone had an almost encyclopedic familiarity with public international telecommunications law, technology, and the long arc of history. He was also universally admired as a dedicated international civil servant which, combined with his friendly Aussie persistence and considerable height, made him the ideal, formidable man for the task.

After he was elected Secretary-General in 1982, Dick decided that he would begin pulling together a team of trusted colleagues to embark on the preparation of a new treaty instrument for enabling global internets and mobile networks. At that time, it was unlawful for international leased circuits to be used for creating internets for data or mobile services available to the public. At the time, all internets were, by definition, private networks and only implemented within enterprises or governments. Like all the many internets, the DARPA Internet only existed internationally as a government network.

As my job in the FCC and across multiple Federal agencies significantly involved the ITU, Dick and I traded ideas about the conference for several years. As his team of compatriots floated concepts in published articles and at conferences, they were merged into the planning process. The model ultimately pursued was that for radio internets developed by the U.S. 60 years earlier by Herbert Hoover and William F. Friedman. At the FCC, I also reported to the former Director of DARPA who had previously authorized and oversaw internet development there, as well as headed up U.S. intelligence community advisory and coordination activities. Deciding the associated internet policies, regulations, and shaping international law were key components of the FCC work during those renaissance years, and supported by CIA and NSA experts. The significantly increased interest in the mid-80s in global internet and mobile networks resulted in Dick picking his hometown of Melbourne and Nov-Dec 1988 for the treaty conference.

In late 1987, things were sufficiently far along that Dick asked me to move from Boston to Geneva to join him as his counselor and Chief of Telecommunication Regulations to further develop the treaty provisions and help negotiate them at the Melbourne treaty conference the next year. In Boston, my job involved collaborating with multiple internet related entities that included the prime contractor for NSA's key cybersecurity platform SDNS (Secure Data Network System).

Standing with Peter Stephen Wilenski (right) who Dick asked to take over as Conference chair on the second day to help save it from disaster along with the changes described. Peter was a really unusual and incredibly talented Australian civil servant like Dick, who escaped from Poland to Australia in 1943. He died rather young in 1994. Photo courtesy of the author's legal assistant, Laina Raveendran-Greene.

As 1988 got underway, things became even more complicated and hectic when GATT (now the WTO) located near the ITU decided it also would develop treaty provisions entwined with the envisioned ITU internet treaty. One of the fortunate assets to assist the effort literally came walking in the door in the form of an energetic young lawyer from Singapore named Laina Raveendran who was doing graduate studies in Geneva and focused on harmonizing the two treaty developments in play. We hired her.

During 1988, all manner of legal and technical research, including historical precedents going back to 1850, was done to ensure the success of the first treaty for global internets and mobile networks. Countless hours were spent attending external meetings, presenting papers and writing articles worldwide. Dick spent day and night traveling and talking by phone to get senior officials from every country in the world, as well as the major industry user organizations, to agree on the provisions that were continually refined and redistributed every week using what the first network-based information system supporting a treaty conference was.

As the representatives from 133 nations were getting ready to head off to Melbourne in November 1988 to ink the first internet treaty, everything appeared good to go. The stated objective in the ITU press release was at hand an enduring treaty to "provide the basic foundation of norms and administrative mechanisms required not only for implementing the 'Networks of the 90's' and beyond but also for assuring the continued availability of traditional existing telecommunications services among the public throughout the world."

However, one of the worst possible events occurred in early November that spelled disaster. A Cornell University graduate student named Robert Tappen Morris created a worm that took down the entire DARPA internet infrastructure. To make this disaster even worse, the legendary New York Times investigative technology journalist John Gregory Markoff took an interest in the incident, and his articles were carried throughout the world almost every day by the International Herald Tribune. It didn't take John long to discover that the identity of Morris' equally legendary but publicly unknown father was NSA's Chief Scientist.

Shortly after Dick's team arrived in Melbourne, the delegates from the USSR several of whom were very knowledgeable KGB and GRU engineers - made it plain they were prepared to call for an end of the conference as a result of the Morris incident. Over several long days, Dick's team developed key provisions for what is the first and to this day the only, global cybersecurity treaty.

It was clever. The same NSA group that Morris' father led at NSA, had the previous year made public the solutions necessary for internet security the SDNS initiative. Furthermore, these solutions were being brought into the CCITT (now ITU-T). The quid pro quo for allowing global public internets to come into existence was adherence to the SDNS provisions being moved into ITU international standards. Dick approached the USSR delegation, who agreed, and it saved the treaty. The photo here is a historical one Dick and I writing the cybersecurity provisions into the draft treaty text.

The conference was extended for several days. All 131 nations signed the treaty at Melbourne, and almost every country in the world subsequently ratified it. It remains an unparalleled achievement.

Dick decided to leave on a high note. He penned an article marking what had been achieved that was published in the Telecommunication Journal in 1989 with its last paragraph noting:

"The CCITT [now ITU-T] Plenary Assembly has helped to provide a concrete technological and operational foundation for the orderly development of the network while the World Administrative Telegraph and Telephone Conference (WATTC88) provided a regulatory framework appropriate for the diverse technological, operational and national policy environments which are so rapidly evolving today."

With the treaty initiative accomplished and yearning to return to his native Australia with his beloved wife Pat after spending decades in Geneva, he announced shortly after the Melbourne conference he would be stepping down as Secretary-General and privately championed Pekka Tarjanne from Finland as his successor. Dick waved good-bye to his team at the ITU in December 1989. He passed away at 86 in 2012 but in the years between helped leverage his incredible knowledge and negotiating skills to bring about many new satellites and high-altitude radio systems for the poor and underserved areas of the world.

Conference Secretariat team, December 1988. Photo courtesy of the author's legal assistant, Laina Raveendran-Greene.

On 1 July 1990 30 years ago the Melbourne Treaty came into force. As my position at the ITU also included being the Chief of International Telecommunication Regulations, under the new Secretary-General who carried on Dick's mission, I issued advisories to signatory nations to implement the internet and cybersecurity treaty provisions. Private leased lines began to be made available pursuant to the treaty, and new dynamic network globalization ensued. NSA's SDNS cybersecurity platform moved into CCITT standards and was implemented in demonstration networks.

Unfortunately, the ground-breaking, historic Melbourne internet and cybersecurity treaty did not fare well in the following years. The Clinton-Gore Administration subsequently decided it would simply ignore the treaty provisions, and halted the NSA SDNS initiative and implementations, along with all government domestic oversight and regulations of internets. Everything was left to the "Information Superhighway" and constant anarchy of an unfettered marketplace. It indeed brought about almost 30 years of cyber chaos to produce what exists today.

Subsequent U.S. Administrations and lobbyists took up the Clinton-Gore gambit of disparaging and ignoring the Melbourne Treaty conveniently sweeping it under the carpet of ignorance, jingoism, and xenophobia that pervades Washington. However, Russia and many other countries have not forgotten what happened. They occasionally exploit the resulting international legal vacuum to remind the U.S. But then, combined with the international disgraces of the current U.S. Administration, trust in the U.S. honoring its international agreements has evaporated anyway. International stature, integrity and trust - once destroyed are not easily acquired again. Reconstruction after the Trump Plague will be difficult.

The Melbourne Treaty's enduring value proposition is increasingly underscored by the emergence of extraterritorial network architectures and services in a 5G world and the occasional pleas of transnational corporate general counsels for a multilateral treaty instrument. The answer is as Dick would say in his emails until his passing - go see U.S. Treaty Document 102-13. The supreme irony is that the model for the Melbourne Treaty was that devised by the U.S. itself a hundred years ago.

Perhaps on the 1 July 2020, some reflection might occur on what was a finer hour in public international law led by a humble visionary man from Australia with enormous integrity and facilitated by the U.S. national security community.

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The Cyberlaw Podcast: Using the Internet to Cause Emotional Distress is a Felony? – Lawfare

This is the week when the movement to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act got serious. The Justice Department released a substantive report suggesting multiple reforms. I was positive about many of them (my views here). Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) has proposed a somewhat similar set of changes in his bill, introduced this week. Nate Jones and I dig into the provisions, and both of us expect interest from Democrats as well as Republicans.

The National Security Agency has launched a pilot program to provide secure domain name system (DNS) resolver services for US defense contractors. If thats such a good idea, I ask, why doesnt everybody do it, and Nick Weaver tells us they can. Phil Reitingers Global Cyberalliance offers Quad9 for this purpose.

Gus Hurwitz brings us up to date on a host of European cyberlaw developments, from terror takedowns (Reuters, Tech Crunch) to competition law to the rise of a disturbingly unaccountable and self-confident judiciary. Microsofts Brad Smith, meanwhile, wins the prize for best marriage of business self-interest and Zeitgeist in the twenty-first century.

Hackers used LinkedIns private messaging feature to send documents containing malicious code which defense contractor employees were tricked into opening. Nick points out just what a boon LinkedIn is for cyberespionage (including his own), and I caution listeners not to display their tattoos on LinkedIn.

Speaking of fools who kind of have it coming, Nick tells the story of the now former eBay executives who have been charged with sustained and imaginatively-over-the-top harassment of the owners of a newsletter that had not been deferential to eBay. (Wired, DOJ)

Its hard to like the defendants in that case, I argue, but the law theyve been charged under is remarkably sweeping. Apparently its a felony to intentionally use the internet to cause substantial emotional distress. Who knew? Most of us who use Twitter thought that was its main purpose. I also discover that special protections under the law are extended not only to prevent internet threats and harassment of service animals but also horses of any kind. Other livestock are apparently left unprotected. PETA, call your office.

Child abusers cheered when Zoom buckled to criticism of its limits on end-to-end encryption, but Nick insists that the new policy offers safeguards for policing misuse of the platform. (Ars Technica, Zoom)

I take a minute to roast Republicans in Congress who have announced that no FISA reauthorization will be adopted until John Durhams investigation of FISA abuses is done, which makes sense until you realize that the FISA provisions up for reauthorization have nothing to do with the abuses Durham is investigating. So were giving international terrorists a break from scrutiny simply because the President cant keep the difference straight.

Nate notes that a story previewed in April has now been confirmed: Team Telecom is recommending the blocking of a Hong Kong-US undersea cable over national security concerns.

Gus reminds us that a bitter trade fight between the US and Europe over taxes on Silicon Valley services is coming. (Politico, Ars Technica)

Nick and I mourn the complete meltdown of mobile phone contact tracing. I argue that from here on out, some portion of coronavirus deaths should be classified as mechanogenic (caused by engineering malpractice). Nick proposes instead a naming convention built around the Therac-25.

And we close with a quick look at the latest data dump from Distributed Denial of Secrets. Nick thinks its strikingly contemporaneous but also surprisingly unscandalizing.

Download the 321st Episode (mp3).

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to [emailprotected]. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

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The Cyberlaw Podcast: Using the Internet to Cause Emotional Distress is a Felony? - Lawfare

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Julian Assange Extradition and the Freedom of Bitcoin Bitcoin… – Bitcoin Magazine

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is currently being held on remand in a London maximum-security prison, solely on the basis of a U.S. extradition request. Assange has been charged with 17 counts of espionage related to WikiLeaks 2010 to 2011 publications concerning the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, embarrassing U.S. diplomatic communications and evidence of torture in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Assanges U.S. extradition case is recognized by free speech groups as the most important press freedom case of the 21st century. As the aggressive judicial overreach of this U.S. government is already creating a chilling effect on reporters and media organizations, some recognize consequences far beyond the future of journalism.

Julian Assanges father, John Shipton, who regularly attends cryptocurrency conferences, has warned those who are involved in the development of new technologies that they are not immune to suffering the same fate as his son.

How does the prosecution of Assange threaten the crypto movement? And why does the Bitcoin community need to be concerned about his plight for freedom?

At its heart, WikiLeaks is an innovative endeavor. Started as a project of Sunshine Press, it was an invention of a new form of journalism built on the platform of the internet. On its websites About page, WikiLeaks described how it started with an online dialogue between activists around the world, who shared their aspiration to eliminate injustice and human suffering caused by the abuses of power of corporations and governments, especially oppressive regimes.

WikiLeaks also acknowledges the efforts of Philip Zimmerman, the creator of an encryption software program known as Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, and how the vision of this lone computer programmer in Colorado instigated a global revolution for mass distribution of privacy technologies.

Inspired by this pioneer of private and secure online communication, the founding members of WikiLeaks sought for a way to deploy information technologies to create a robust system of publishing that protects the anonymity of sources and enables transparency of the powerful. This new journalistic organization aimed to make document leaking technology available at a global scale in order to better bring accountability to governments and other institutions.

History has shown how new ideas and inventions are often met with opposition and fierce condemnation by the state. At the start of the 1990s, when Zimmermann released PGP, the U.S. government considered what he had done the equivalent of exporting munitions. It launched a three-year criminal investigation against him, creating a battle over encryption that became known to some as The Crypto Wars. The case was eventually dropped when U.S. courts ruled that software source code qualifies as speech protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Two decades later, WikiLeaks efforts to amplify information technologies to tackle the problem of government secrecy created another global revolution, this time disrupting the media landscape. Like its forerunner, this new free press of the digital age soon became a target of political retaliation.

After WikiLeaks released classified documents that revealed U.S. war crimes, the U.S. government decided that its editor-in-chief had damaged national security, though it produced no shred of evidence that the published documents caused any harm. It effectively declared war on the First Amendment, charging an Australian journalist under the Espionage Act in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Just as in the first Crypto War, where it tried to ban encryption, it was now trying to shut down WikiLeaks.

What is this new Crypto War now being waged against the whistleblowing site all about? This battle is not just about Assange as an individual. While mainstream media fixates on Assange and his character, WikiLeaks is not driven solely by one charismatic man. Behind the organization, there are thousands of ordinary people worldwide who are dedicated to the principle of freedom of speech.

At the end of 2010, when WikiLeaks began publishing troves of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables, its website came under heavy pressure by the U.S. government and its allies. Insurgency swiftly emerged from deep inside the web to help WikiLeaks counteract distributed-denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks. By keeping multiple copies of its website, and setting up mirror sites, anonymous networks allowed information to continue to flow.

Inspiring those collective acts of resistance in an underground subculture of the internet are shared values and ideals, embodied in the cypherpunk philosophy. Emerging in the late 1980s, the cypherpunk movement is a loosely tied group of mathematicians, computer scientists and online activists who advocate privacy through the use of strong cryptography.

Assange is known to have joined the cypherpunk mailing list in late 1993 or early 1994. His engagement with those on the edges on the internet had a large influence on his intellectual development. The native Australian software programmer and expert in cryptography once summed up the core values behind WikiLeaks by saying, capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims.

He acknowledged this is something that he learned from his own father and other capable, generous men in his life. This moral value, installed at an early age, found practical application in the cypherpunks core belief: Cryptography can be a key tool for protecting individual autonomy threatened by power.

In his 2006 essay Conspiracy as Governance, a kind of manifesto from which WikiLeaks was conceived, Assange analyzed the structure of power and means to shift the balance of power between the individual and the state. By using cryptography as a non-violent democratic weapon that gives claws to the weak, Assange found a way to provide information to the public, to hold the powerful accountable, and to help ordinary people empower themselves with knowledge.

Cypherpunks saw the political implications of their work and strove for proper use of the power inherent in cryptography. This attitude has shaped the ethics of cryptographers and defined cypherpunk cryptography as crypto with values.

Eric Hughes who, in 1992, co-founded the influential cypherpunk mailing list, together with Timothy C. May and John Gilmore, described those values as openness, the free flow of information and decentralization. In A Cypherpunks Manifesto, published in 1993, he declared that code is free for all to use, worldwide. Assange also articulated the moral values of cypherpunks, noting the whole point of free software is to liberate it in all senses. He added that, Its part of the intellectual heritage of man. True intellectual heritage cant be bound up in intellectual property.

Instead of claiming ownership of their knowledge, cypherpunks aimed to build software on a ground of free sharing and open platforms, in which everyone can participate and make contributions to the development and utilization.

Zimmermann gave PGP away online, making the source code free and freely available. Through people all over the world simply downloading and using it, the decentralization of that technology helped to secure the right to privacy at a large scale. By deploying an anonymous, secure drop box, WikiLeaks made it possible for people around the globe to speak out against their governments wrongdoing without fear of their identity being revealed. Courage of whistleblowers became contagious, creating waves of disclosures. WikiLeaks, powered by free software, began to liberate information that had been captured under the proprietary ownership of corporations and governments.

It is with this cypherpunk vision of ethics that Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, also published its white paper online. The invention of Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, unleashed the revolutionary power of cryptography. This community-driven, free software project set in motion a decentralized movement to liberate money from the monopoly of central banks. By people across the world simply choosing to run full nodes, each containing a complete record of all Bitcoin transactions, a network secures this stateless digital cash as a form of free speech that belongs to everyone.

Years before the U.S. governments assault on free speech escalated into the indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin recognized the potential fate that would befall the worlds first global Fourth Estate.

In December 2010, WikiLeaks faced the unlawful financial blockade imposed by private payment processing companies, and the organization was considering using Bitcoin to circumvent it. Satoshi, who was concerned about the risk of drawing unwanted government attention to his then infant currency, appealed to WikiLeaks not to take such action.

In an online post, Satoshi noted that, WikiLeaks has kicked the hornets nest, and the swarm is headed towards us.

WikiLeaks eventually did turn to Bitcoin to achieve financial sovereignty. And now the swarm is now getting larger, bringing a new war on cryptography.

The citizens of the internet have been longing for another world, independent from the old world of exploitation, violence and control. Dreams for freenet, for the internet to become an emancipatory tool for building peer-to-peer systems, have united people around the world together in the frontier of cyberspace.

Meanwhile, the U.S. governments prosecution of Assange is a direct attack on freedom of expression; peoples ability to form and exchange ideas and collaborate creatively. What is now being threatened is our shared values and a vision for the future of the internet at the heart of Bitcoins decentralized consensus.

Bitcoin, from its inception, was a political act. This is shown in the highly politicized message in the genesis block, referring to a banking bailout. In the lively discussion of public cryptography in 1992 on the cypherpunk mailing list, the late Hal Finney, a noted cryptographer who is considered to be one of the earliest Bitcoin pioneers, reminded us of the ethical responsibility of cryptographers:

The computer can be used as a tool to liberate and protect people, rather than to control them, Finney, who received the very first bitcoin transaction sent by Satoshi, wrote, urging Bitcoin early adopters to put their unearned wealth to good use.

Now, as Assanges U.S. extradition battle intensifies, the internet is calling for the rise of cypherpunks Assanges fellow capable generous men, who exercise their power for social good to unite once again and take up their moral duty. The future of the internet believes in Bitcoin, the potential of this crypto with values to become the currency of resistance to defend its freedom.

Authors Note: WikiLeaks has launched the official campaign page, Dont Extradite Assange. You can get information on how you can help stop Assanges extradition. Please consider donating to the WikiLeaks official Defense Fund and take action.

This is a guest post by Nozomi Hayase. Opinions expressed are entirely her own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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DDoS Protection Market 2020 | How The Industry Will Witness Substantial Growth In The Upcoming Years | Exclusive Report By MRE – Cole of Duty

The DDoS Protection Market is segmented on the lines of its component, application area, deployment mode, organization size, vertical and regional. Based on component segmentation it covers solution, service, professional service, design and implementation, consulting services, training and education, support and maintenance, managed service. Based on application area segmentation it covers network, application, database, endpoint. Based on deployment mode segmentation it covers on-premises, cloud, hybrid. Based on organization size segmentation it covers small and medium enterprises (SMEs), large enterprises. Based on vertical segmentation it covers government and defense, banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI), manufacturing, energy and utilities, it and telecom, healthcare, education, retail, others. The DDoS Protection Market on geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geographic market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.

FYI, You will get latest updated report as per the COVID-19 Impact on this industry. Our updated reports will now feature detailed analysis that will help you make critical decisions.

Browse Full Report: https://www.marketresearchengine.com/ddos-protection-market

The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Akamai Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), F5 Networks (U.S.), Imperva, Inc. (U.S.), Arbor Networks, Inc. (U.S.), Radware, Ltd. (Israel), Corero Network Security, Inc. (U.S.), Neustar, Inc. (U.S.), Cloudflare, Inc. (U.S.), Nexusguard, Ltd. (U.S.), and DOSarrest Internet Security, Ltd. (Canada), service providers, and system integrators. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.

The DDoS Protection Market is expected to exceed more than US$ 3 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 21% in the given forecast period.

A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is an effort to exhaust the assets available to a network, application or service so that genuine users cannot gain access. DDoS attacks are a constant danger to businesses and organizations by threatening facility performance or to closed a website entirely, even for a short time. Unmistakably extra arrangements are expected to supplement existing security foundation in a layered resistance display.

The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets on DDoS Protection Market with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.

This report provides:

1) An overview of the global market for DDoS Protection Market and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2015, estimates for 2016 and 2017, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2024.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for DDoS Protection Market.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.

The major driving factors of DDoS Protection Market are as follows:

The restraining factors of DDoS Protection Market are as follows:

The DDoS Protection Market has been segmented as below:

The DDoS Protection Market is Segmented on the lines of Vertical Analysis, Component Analysis, Application Area Analysis, Deployment Mode Analysis, Organization Size Analysis and Regional Analysis. By Vertical Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of Government and Defense, Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI), Manufacturing, Energy and Utilities, IT and Telecom, Healthcare, Education and Retail. By Component Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of Solution, Service, Professional service, Design and implementation, Consulting services, Training and education, Support and maintenance and Managed service. By Application Area Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of Network, Application, Database and Endpoint.

By Deployment Mode Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of On-Premises, Cloud and Hybrid. By Organization Size Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Large Enterprises. By Regional Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World.

Request Sample Report from here: https://www.marketresearchengine.com/ddos-protection-market

Table of Contents:

1 Introduction2 Research Methodology

2.1 Research Data2.1.1 Secondary Data2.1.1.1 Key Data From Secondary Sources2.1.2 Primary Data2.1.2.1 Key Data From Primary Sources2.1.2.2 Key Industry Insights2.1.2.3 Breakdown of Primary Interviews2.2 Market Size Estimation2.2.1 Bottom-Up Approach2.2.2 Top-Down Approach2.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation2.4 Research Assumptions

3 Executive Summary

4 Premium Insights5 Market Overview

6 Industry Trends7 DDoS Protection Market Analysis, By Component8 DDoS Protection Market Analysis, By Application Area9 DDoS Protection Market Analysis, By Deployment Mode10 DDoS Protection Market Analysis, By Organization Size11 DDoS Protection Market Analysis, By Vertical12 DDoS Protection Market Analysis, By Region13 Competitive Landscape14 Company Profiles14.1 Introduction14.2 Arbor Networks, Inc.14.3 Akamai Technologies, Inc.14.4 F5 Networks, Inc.14.5 Imperva14.6 Radware Ltd.14.7 Corero Network Security, Inc.14.8 Neustar, Inc.14.9 Cloudflare, Inc.14.10 Nexusguard Ltd14.11 Dosarrest Internet Security Ltd

Other Related Market Research Reports:

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Electrical SCADA Market is Expected to Cross US$ 4 Billion By 2023

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How to become a web developer? – The Tribune

Internets exponential growth and the benefits associated with it have made businesses start, expand, and shift their services online through websites. From buying, selling, and renting, to browsing TV content, watching videos, listening to music, and using social media, everything is possible only because of websites and web applications. With more organisations willing to attract a large set of customers globally, the need for an aesthetically pleasing, responsive, and user-friendly website is growing. As per LinkedIns 2020 Emerging Jobs Report India (Source), JavaScript developer, back end developer, full-stack engineer, Python developer, and front-end engineer fall under the list of top 15 emerging jobs. The massive requirement of web developers highlights why you should think of making a career in the same. However, before you plan to do so, here is all that you must know about web development.

What is Web development?

Web development is the process of building and maintaining websites to host via the internet. The process involves tasks such as web designing, client-side and server-side scripting, web content development, and network security configuration to build a perfect website or web application. Web design and web development are two most confused and interchangeably used terms, however, they are not the same. While web design focuses on aesthetics, design, layout, and user experience of the website, web development involves the usage of web languages, software, and coding to make the website functional. Web development is about experimenting with new technologies, solving customers problems, and building a responsive, easily accessible, and useful websites.

Why is Web development needed?

Websites have become the first point of communication between customers and brands lately. It helps in creating awareness about a brand and its products and services, it generates leads, and it facilitates buying and selling of products. Websites give customers more liberty to choose, buy, and pay for a product as per their requirements, from anywhere, 24x7.

Similarly, a well optimised, partially automated website, helps businesses hire employees only for the essential tasks rather than just assisting customers in selecting, buying, paying, or returning products like they do in physical stores. Had web development not been there, businesses could not have built their remarkable identity standing strong in todays cut-throat competition. Web development helps organisations expand their reach through a credible platform, reduce costs, provide 24x7 accessibility to the customers, and pave the way for affordable worldwide marketing.

When do organisations need web developers?

Organisations are established to detect customers problems and solve them. After detection of the problem, companies find and build a solution that reaches the customers through a website. While anyone can create a website today with free-of-cost page builders and templates, only a skilled, technically sound, visually creative, and experienced web developer can make a customised website as per companies requirements. Organisations need professional web developers to build the website or web application that allows customers to connect with the brand to find apt solutions such as purchasing goods, paying bills, booking tickets, learning, and seeking entertainment. Organisations either hire web developers on a full-time basis or on a contractual basis for specific projects.

Companies look up to skilled web developers when they wish to execute their idea of building a website from scratch. Web developers assist brands in finalising the website design as per the trends, user requirements, and relevance to the competitors and the market. They build and test the website, add content management systems and complicated e-commerce tools in it, and they use programming languages like HTML & CSS to code the website. Web developers collectively work with different teams to finalise the content that would go on the website, decide the websites layout, graphics, audio, and video with the help of other designers, and continuously monitor the website to manage its functionality, add new features, and keep the site secure.

Where is the need for Web development felt?

Career opportunities for web developers:Companies in almost every industry, be it technology, manufacturing, education, retail, food and beverage, entertainment, or telecommunications need professional web developers who can build, maintain, manage, and upgrade websites. People with knowledge of web development could work at

Who can do Web development?

Web development is an extensive task that demands technical and non-technical proficiency along with practical experience of building the website, finding and rectifying errors, updating content, and monitoring the website. Someone can perform web development once they choose an industry, niche, and category they would like to work in as the skills required for each differ. Web developers generally work in 3 major categories:

After choosing any one of the above mentioned three, one can start learning the essential skills required for web development. Knowledge of programming languages such as HTML, CSS, SQL, Java, Python, and XML, understanding of UI/UX, back end basics, testing and debugging skills, and responsive design skills are must to build a career as a web developer. Analytical skills, interpersonal skills, teamwork, time-management, constant improvement and learning, and staying up-to-date with the latest web development tools and industry trends are some of the essential soft skills they must have. Someone with all these skills and the enthusiasm to work on user experience, browser compatibility, API and databases, internet security, responsive design, and networks and servers every day can do web development.

How to learn Web development?

Web development brings some of the most dynamic, creative, and interesting career opportunities if learnt from a credible online training platform or university. Online web development courses are extremely popular as they provide extensive practical exposure that physical training institutes sometimes fail to serve the students with due to lack of devices, internet access, technological availability, and higher teaching charges. Online trainings are affordable, accessible, and easily available even in the most remote parts of the country.

Enrolling in an online web development training will help you learn HTML & CSS to build the structure of web pages and to style them, Bootstrap to develop responsive mobile web pages, SQL queries to create, manage, and store information in the database, and PHP to perform operations on the database and to build functional logic. You will learn through engaging video tutorials in a 6 weeks long training which also includes multiple assignments, assessment tests, code challenges, quizzes and exercises. Along with expert support through the forum, a certificate with a unique verification number, and placement assistance, you will get to work on a real-life e-commerce website from scratch where you will deploy all the web development skills and tools learnt in the training.

Inputs from Internshala Trainings (trainings.internshala.com)

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EAC to evaluate testing and certification of non-voting equipment – Politico

By TIM STARKS

06/17/2020 10:00 AM EDT

Updated 06/18/2020 07:02 PM EDT

With help from Eric Geller, Martin Matishak and Cristiano Lima

Programming announcement: This 10 a.m. version of Morning Cybersecurity will end daily publication on July 10 and move to a week-ahead style newsletter that publishes on Monday mornings. The daily 6 a.m. version will continue for POLITICO Pro subscribers. For information on how you can continue to receive daily policy content, as well as information for current POLITICO Pro subscribers, please visit our website.

The Election Assistance Commission and Center for Internet Security paired up on a pilot project to figure out how to test and certify non-voting election equipment.

The Senates annual defense policy bill largely gave the Trump administration what it asked for on Pentagon cyber spending, an Armed Services Committee aide said.

An infamous North Korean hacking group might be behind cyberattacks on European military and aerospace companies motivated by secrets and cash.

HAPPY WEDNESDAY and welcome to Morning Cybersecurity! None of these recent revivals of all-time classic comedy shows have worked out, have they? Send your thoughts, feedback and especially tips to [emailprotected]. Be sure to follow @POLITICOPro and @MorningCybersec. Full team info below.

A message from the NYU School of Professional Studies - MS in Global Security, Conflict, and Cybercrime:

The MS in Global Security, Conflict, and Cybercrime is a STEM-designated, graduate degree offered by the NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs (CGA). It prepares students for leadership, management, analytical, and advocacy positions within organizations that are ready to confront the threat of cyber conflict. LEARN MORE.

MEET RABET-V The EAC is taking the first step toward a testing and certification program for e-poll books, results websites and other election technology not currently covered by federal certification standards. Eric reports this morning that the EAC has partnered with the nonprofit Center for Internet Security on a pilot project to evaluate ways to test and certify non-voting election equipment. Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin are part of the Rapid Architecture-Based Election Technology Verification project. So is the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which coordinates voting processes for overseas Americans and U.S. service members, the two largest constituencies for internet voting another technology currently outside the scope of federal certification.

The new pilot project, known as RABET-V, will also seek out ways to encourage manufacturers to design systems for frequent, incremental updates and recertifications, a major goal of election security experts who criticize the current cumbersome process. The EAC sees a need for jurisdictions across the U.S. to have a consistent way to evaluate the capabilities and security of manufacturers non-voting election technology, Vice Chairman Donald Palmer said in a statement.

The EAC first discussed plans to broaden election technology testing in February, when Palmer told state officials that the marketplace for non-voting equipment, which included some of our most vulnerable systems, was comparable to the Wild West in terms of security oversight. Federal testing standards, which are optional but have been adopted in most states, only cover equipment used to create, mark and tabulate ballots, such as voting machines and optical scanners. This excludes frequently targeted systems such as voter registration databases and election night results reporting websites.

ESCAPE FROM L.A. The hours-long wait times that snarled the March 3 primary in Los Angeles County stemmed from malfunctions in the electronic tablets used to check in voters at the polls, according to an unpublicized county report that adds to questions about the nations readiness for November, Kim Zetter reports for Pros. The report concludes that these devices known as electronic poll books and not the countys new $300 million voting machines were the source of those delays. Although the voting machines also had problems, the report faults inadequate planning, testing and programming of the poll books that workers used to check in voters and verify that theyre registered technology that has also been implicated in this months meltdown at the polls in Georgias primary. Read on if youre a Pro.

DoD CYBER BUDGET OKD, MORE OR LESS The Senates annual defense policy bill approves President Donald Trumps $9.8 billion budget request for Pentagon cyberspace activities, a congressional aide told reporters on Tuesday. At a high-level the [Senate Armed Services Committee] fully funded the cybersecurity priorities of the department, according to the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the $740 billion spending blueprint, which has yet to be publicly released.

The topline figure includes $3.8 billion for defensive and offensive digital operations, with $2.2 billion of that supporting the 133-team Cyber Mission Force at U.S. Cyber Command the same amount the administration requested last fiscal year. About $5.4 billion would go toward cybersecurity, including $673 million to protect next-generation platforms (e.g., new weapons systems, technology). The aide suggested lawmakers cut spending or added strings in a few small, isolated places of certain DoD cybersecurity programs due to oversight concerns but declined to provide specific examples before the measure is released.

MAYBE LAZARUS RISES AGAIN The North Korean government-linked Lazarus Group might be behind a series of targeted cyberattacks on European military and aerospace companies last fall, ESET said in research out this morning. The hackers used LinkedIn-based spearphishing in what ESET dubbed Operation In(ter)ception based on the name of a related malware sample. They appeared to be motivated by cyber espionage and extracting money from the companies.

The attacks that ESET investigated began with a message that was a quite believable job offer, seemingly from a well-known company in a relevant sector, said Dominik Breitenbacher, the ESET malware researcher who analyzed the malware and led the investigation. Of course, the LinkedIn profile was fake, and the files sent within the communication were malicious.

TARNISH ON THE NIGERIAN PRINCE CROWN The Trump administration issued sanctions on Tuesday against six Nigerians accused of business email compromise and romance scams against U.S. individuals and businesses. The action taken collectively by the departments of Justice, State, Treasury would block assets and prohibit people in the U.S. from dealing with Nnamdi Benson, Abiola Kayode, Alex Ogunshakin, Felix Okpoh, Michael Olorunyomi and Richard Uzuh.

The six individuals designated today manipulated their victims to gain access to their sensitive information and financial resources. The U.S. will not tolerate such gross misuse of technology, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said. The United States will use all of the tools at our disposal to defend the American people and businesses from malign actors that seek to target them, including cyber-enabled actors who prey on vulnerable Americans and businesses.

GROUPS URGE CONGRESS TO DROP SURVEILLANCE TECH FUNDS First from our friends at Morning Tech: Over 100 civil rights and civil liberties groups today are calling on House leaders to cease federal funding for the surveillance technologies that are being used to militarize our communities and criminalize dissent. In a letter going out today to top lawmakers in the House and its Judiciary Committee, the groups say law enforcement use of cutting-edge tools to monitor protests against the killing of George Floyd has chilled activists' free expression rights.

What theyre pushing for: It has become abundantly clear that we need a dramatic change to policing in our communities, including divesting from police, write the groups, which include the ACLU, Color of Change, Free Press and the Center for Democracy & Technology. This reform must also include dramatic changes to our surveillance infrastructure, which has also contributed to increased militarization and policing abuses. And they say federal money for technologies that are antithetical to the First and Fourth Amendment should cease.

The push comes as Democratic lawmakers have increasingly sounded the alarm on law enforcement surveillance, including the use of emerging technologies like facial recognition software and drones, at the recent wave of racial justice protests.

Where talks stand on the Hill: The bicameral Democratic police reform package included some narrow checks on such tools, including banning warrantless federal law enforcement use of facial recognition software on body-cam footage. But the incoming Senate GOP policing package includes no mentions of facial recognition software, biometric identification or surveillance more broadly, according to bill text obtained by POLITICOs Marianne LeVine signaling daylight on the issue between the two sides.

TWEET OF THE DAY Just like the Founders intended.

RECENTLY ON PRO CYBERSECURITY Poor cybersecurity procedures at the CIA contributed to the Vault 7 leak, according to an internal agency task force. Physicists have extended the capabilities of secure quantum communication tenfold, marking a step forward in efforts to establish hack-proof network communications, according to a study published by scientific journal Nature. The European Data Protection Board cast doubt on whether a U.S.-EU data sharing deal has sufficient privacy safeguards.

Researchers uncovered vulnerabilities in the official Trump 2020 app that might have allowed hackers to access user data, and the campaign issued a fix. President Donald Trumps comments on a trade deal with China is a factor in the extradition case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.

Jim Baker has joined Twitter as its deputy general counsel. The former FBI general counsel has been on both sides of the encryption fight.

Wired: A series of bugs in one companys software could have impacted hundreds of millions of internet-connected devices.

The Federal Information Security Modernization Act report on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for this year has arrived, and it found some weaknesses.

ZDNet: Avon had a cybersecurity incident.

The Hill: A House Democrat is seeking an FBI briefing on foreign adversaries perhaps exploiting the police brutality protests.

Graphika released a report on a Russian disinformation campaign.

Amnesty International warned about privacy problems with some nations Covid-19 apps.

Motherboard: Theres no evidence of a DDoS attack by Anonymous causing a T-Mobile outage.

CyberScoop: The National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium issued a memo about the outage.

Thats all for today.

Stay in touch with the whole team: Eric Geller ([emailprotected], @ericgeller); Bob King ([emailprotected], @bkingdc); Martin Matishak ([emailprotected], @martinmatishak); Tim Starks ([emailprotected], @timstarks); and Heidi Vogt ([emailprotected], @heidivogt).

CLARIFICATION: Morning Cybersecurity has been updated to clarify the item about RABET-V. It will not involve internet voting systems.

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