Martin Matishak reports: A House Republican late last week introduced legislation to untangle the country’s jumble of cybersecurity regulations, keeping the bipartisan proposal alive as Congress finishes its work for 2024. The measure from Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a member of both the House Homeland Security and Oversight committees, is a companion bill to bipartisan…
Category: Of Note
CISA Director Jen Easterly to depart on Inauguration Day
This was predictable, but it’s also a damned shame. Alexandra Kelley and David DiMolfetta report: Jen Easterly, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s stalwart champion and a figurehead among cybersecurity and intelligence community practitioners, will leave her post Jan. 20 next year when President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated back into the White House, people familiar…
Idaho man who hacked medical entities and made vile threats sentenced to 10 years in prison (1)
An Idaho man who worked as an Information Technology Specialist for Ada County by day has been sentenced to prison for hacking medical offices and threatening his victims if they didn’t pay his ransom demands. Background of the Case In July 2017, DataBreaches reported a hacking incident with a ransom demand where the description of…
Amazon confirms employee data breach after vendor hack
Sergiu Gatlan reports: Amazon confirmed a data breach involving employee information after data allegedly stolen during the May 2023 MOVEit attacks was leaked on a hacking forum. The threat actor behind this data leak, known as Nam3L3ss, published over 2.8 million lines of Amazon employee data, including names, contact information, building locations, email addresses, and more….
Biden Administration to Support Controversial UN Cyber Treaty
Jamie Tarabay reports: The Biden administration plans to support a controversial cybercrime treaty at the United Nations this week despite concerns that it could be misused by authoritarian regimes, according to senior government officials. The agreement would be the first legally binding UN agreement on cybersecurity and could become a global legal framework for countries to cooperate…
It’s the Senate’s last chance to pass the bipartisan PRESS Act: Get Busy!
Zack Whittaker reports: Folks in America: Your senators only have a few weeks left to pass the PRESS Act, a federal “shield” bill that the House passed with unanimous, bipartisan support in January but has been waiting in the Senate for a final vote ever since. The PRESS Act, if passed into law, would enshrine nationwide protections for journalists across…