As President Joe Biden prepares for his first meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Geneva, the White House says the threat of ransomware will be a “significant topic” of conversation between the two leaders.Until just a couple of years ago, ransomware was viewed largely as a financial crime, hardly an issue that would dominate the first face-to-face meeting between the Russian and American leaders.But the issue was catapulted to the forefront of geopolitics last month after cybercriminals believed to be operating in Russia breached the networks of a major U.S. pipeline operator and a meat processor, demanding and receiving millions of dollars in ransom.Although U.S. officials have not accused the Russian government of direct involvement in the latest attacks, some lawmakers say Russia-based cybercriminals often work with the knowledge, if not the complicity, of the Kremlin. They are demanding that Biden deliver a tough message to Putin to end the practice.In a ransomware attack, cybercriminals encrypt a company’s or institution’s data and then demand a ransom in exchange for a decryption key and a promise not to release the data. Ransomware groups often offer their services to other hackers in exchange for a share of the ransom. Experts say this has helped lure a growing number of otherwise novice cybercriminals into the lucrative ransomware business.Following are the answers to three key questions about Russia’s role in ransomware attacks:What do we know about Russian-speaking ransomware groups?Cybersecurity firms track several dozen ransomware groups around the world. Most are believed to operate in Russia and former Soviet republics such as Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Latvia, according to the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.Their precise number is unknown, though it has steadily grown in the past couple of years. Recorded Future tracks about 15 Russian-speaking ransomware groups. Check Point, an American-Israeli security firm, monitors seven, including several responsible for major ransomware attacks in recent years.Among them are DarkSide and REvil, the two groups behind the attacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS, a major beef producer, respectively. REvil was behind some of the biggest ransomware attacks in the U.S. in 2020, according to Lotem Finkelstein, Check Point’s threat intelligence group manager.”Maybe there are more, but we can only speculate,” Finkelstein said in an interview with VOA.Babuk, another Russian-speaking ransomware family discovered early this year, has attacked at least five big entities, with one victim already paying the attackers $85,000 in ransom, according to the cybersecurity firm McAfee.  The Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., reportedly was another victim. The Russian-speaking ransomware groups follow an unwritten rule: As long as they avoid targets in Russia and other former Soviet republics, “they’re left to operate in peace by local authorities,” Recorded Future says.Another rule of the game: Ransomware gangs work only with Russian-speaking partners.What is known about ties between ransomware gangs and the Kremlin?The Russian government has denied any involvement in the recent ransomware attacks on the U.S., and the precise ties between the ransomware groups and the Kremlin remain uncertain. While U.S. officials have accused Russian spy services of co-opting criminal hackers, they’ve been careful not to directly blame the Russian government for the recent attacks on Colonial Pipeline and JBS.In the wake of the attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which sparked panic purchasing of gasoline and traffic congestion along the East Coast, President Biden has said that so far, there has been “no evidence based on, from our intelligence people, that Russia is involved, though there is evidence that the actors, ransomware, is in Russia.”During a recent congressional hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he could not publicly discuss the nexus between cybercriminals and the Russian actors. Nevertheless, he noted that the “most recent” ransomware attackers “are individuals who, perhaps not coincidentally, specifically target English-speaking victims.”U.S. lawmakers go further, however, insisting that the attacks emanating from Russia could not take place without at least the Russian government’s tactic approval. Senator Mark Warner, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and co-chair of the bipartisan Senate Cybersecurity Caucus, said the cybercriminals operate “with the indirect acquiescence of the Russian government.””And don’t think for a moment that the Russia spy services, the Russian government isn’t watching and learning from the techniques of these cybercriminals,” Warner said during an interview on Washington Post Live on Monday.The line between cybercriminals and state actors has blurred. Many Russia-based cybercriminals may be working for Russian spy services during the day and “moonlighting” as cybercriminals in the evening, Warner said.How is the U.S. responding to the threat of ransomware?With ransomware emerging as a national security threat, some lawmakers and cybersecurity experts are calling for a more aggressive U.S. response. The Justice Department’s recently formed ransomware task force recovered most of the $5 million of cryptocurrency paid by Colonial Pipeline. The effort to recover the ransom is important, experts say, but lawmakers warn it’s not enough to halt the larger problem.”I believe we need to start thinking about going on the offense and hitting them back,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul said during a House Homeland Security hearing on the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. “There should be consequences.”Cybersecurity experts agree that a more vigorous government response is needed.”I certainly think that there is a way and an opportunity to disrupt the aggressive threat actors that continue to cause havoc in the United States,” said Charles Carmakal, chief technology officer at the cybersecurity firm FireEye.Ahead of Wednesday’s summit, Putin has suggested that one approach might be a mutual agreement to extradite cybercriminals between the U.S. and Russia. Biden said at the G-7 meeting that he was “open” to Putin’s idea, calling the offer “potentially a good sign of progress.”National security adviser Jake Sullivan later clarified Biden’s statement, saying the president is “not saying he’s going to exchange cybercriminals with Russia” but that he agrees cybercriminals should be held accountable in both countries. 
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Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott announced Tuesday that she has donated $2.7 billion to communities “that have been historically underfunded and overlooked.” “Because community-centered service is such a powerful catalyst and multiplier, we spent the first quarter of 2021 identifying and evaluating equity-oriented nonprofit teams working in areas that have been neglected,” Scott wrote in a blog post. But Scott emphasized in the post that she struggled with headlines centering on her instead of the organizations and causes she hopes to uplift.  “Putting large donors at the center of stories on social progress is a distortion of their role,” Scott wrote. She said that the headline she would wish for her post was “286 Teams Empowering Voices the World Needs to Hear.” Among the “teams” Scott listed as the recipients of her donations were higher education institutions “successfully educating students who come from communities that have been chronically underserved.” Scott also listed interfaith organizations working to bridge racial divides, and arts and cultural institutions working with “culturally rich regions and identity groups that donors often overlook.” Scott committed to donating half her fortune to charity upon divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2019.MacKenzie Bezos Pledges to Give Away Half Her Fortune

        MacKenzie Bezos, who just months ago divorced the world's richest man, has pledged to give away half her fortune to charity. The former wife of Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos is one of the 19 new signatories to the Giving Pledge who have promised to donate more than 50% of their wealth, the organization said. "I have a disproportionate amount of money to share,'' MacKenzie Bezos said in a letter released Tuesday. "My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take…

“My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty,” she wrote at the time. Scott has donated an estimated $8.5 billion in the past year. 
 
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The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a battle with U.S. tech firms over a new set of online speech rules that it has enacted for the nation of nearly 1.4 billion.  The rules require companies to restrict a range of topics on their services, comply with government takedown orders and identify the original source of information shared. If the companies fail to comply, tech firm employees can be held criminally liable.  The escalation of tensions between Modi’s government and tech firms, activists say, could result in the curtailment of Indians’ online speech.  “Absent a change in direction, the future of free speech in the world’s largest democracy is increasingly imperiled,” said Samir Jain, director of policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a digital rights advocacy group. “Users will have less freedom of expression and less access to news and entertainment that is unapproved by the government. The rules will thereby undermine Indian democracy,” Jain told VOA. At the center of the battle is Twitter, which asked for a three-month extension to comply with the new IT rules that went into effect May 25.  On May 24, New Delhi police attempted to deliver a notice to Twitter’s office, which was closed at the time, and then released a video of officers entering the building and searching the offices on local TV channels. #WATCH | Team of Delhi Police Special cell carrying out searches in the offices of Twitter India (in Delhi & Gurugram)Visuals from Lado Sarai. pic.twitter.com/eXipqnEBgt— ANI (@ANI) May 24, 2021In a tweet days later, Twitter said it was “concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve.”Right now, we are concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve.— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) May 27, 2021“We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global terms of service, as well as with core elements of the new IT rules,” the company said.  Earlier this month, the government sent a letter to Twitter saying it was giving the company “one final notice” adding that if Twitter fails to comply, there will be “unintended consequences,” according to NPR, which obtained the letter.  “It is beyond belief that Twitter Inc. has doggedly refused to create mechanisms that will enable the people of India to resolve their issues on the platform in a timely and transparent manner and through fair processes by India based clearly identified resources,” the letter said. The Indian government is pushing back on criticism that its new rules restrict online speech.  “Protecting free speech in India is not the prerogative of only a private, for-profit, foreign entity like Twitter, but it is the commitment of the world’s largest democracy and its robust institutions,” India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said in a statement. Some who are critical of the government’s new IT rules are also skeptical of the tech industry’s response.  It is “not an existential crisis as everyone will have us believe,” said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of India’s Software Freedom Law Center. Choudhary said users will be forced to stay on the sidelines, rather than taking an active role in discussions about their basic rights.  “Some of the companies are still playing the game of ‘we are a sales office’ or ‘our servers are in California,’ frustrating anyone who comes to their legitimate defense as well,” Choudhary said.  India has a long tradition of free speech, and its tech savvy market is attractive for U.S. tech firms looking to expand. Although the Indian constitution protects certain rights to freedom of speech, it has restrictions. Expressions are banned that threaten “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”Even before the recent tensions between tech firms and the government, India was among the top nations in the world seeking to restrict online speech. From Jan. 1, 2020, to June 1, 2020, India was one of the top five countries asking Twitter to remove content. For example, after violent protests on Jan. 26th involving farmers unhappy with new agricultural laws, the Modi government demanded Twitter block 500 accounts, including those of journalists, activists and opposition leaders. Twitter did so, and then eventually reversed course only to receive a noncompliance notice, according to a company statement. Several Indian journalists faced charges of sedition over their reporting and online posts following the protest by farmers. Among them is the executive editor of the Caravan magazine, Vinod K. Jose and although his Twitter handle is currently active, it was withheld in India this year.The official handle of @thecaravanindia is withheld in India: pic.twitter.com/2t4FV5IgM0— Vinod K. Jose (@vinodjose) February 1, 2021The government is also particularly sensitive about criticism of its handling of the coronavirus, asking that social media firms remove mention of the B.1617 variant as the “Indian variant.”  In May, the government ordered social media firms to remove any mention of the Indian variant. The variant first reported in India is now called Delta, according to the World Health Organization. Earlier this month, Twitter complied with a request from the government to block the Twitter account of Punjabi-born Jaswinder Singh Bains, alias JazzyB, a rapper. While Twitter informed him that he had been blocked for reportedly violating India’s Information Technology Act, he said he believes he was blocked for supporting the farmers in their protests, according to media reports. Jason Pielemeier, director of policy and strategy at the Global Network Initiative, an alliance of tech companies supporting freedom of expression online, wrote to the MeitY, Pielemeier calling attention to many issues with the new rules.  “Each of these concerns on its own can negatively impact freedom of expression and privacy in India,” he wrote. “Together, they create significant risk of undermining digital rights and trust in India’s regulatory approach to the digital ecosystem.” Twitter isn’t the only tech firm affected by new laws. WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging app owned by Facebook, filed a lawsuit in May against the Indian government arguing that the new rules allow for “mass surveillance.” According to the lawsuit, the new rules are illegal and “severely undermine” the right to privacy of its users.At issue for WhatsApp is that under the new rules, encryption would have to be removed, and according to The Guardian, messages would have to be in a “traceable” database. 
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Digital images of fake people–that look real–are being sold online—by the thousands. Deana Mitchell explores the issue.Producer: Deana Mitchell
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The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a battle with U.S. tech firms over a new set of online speech rules that it has enacted for the nation of nearly 1.4 billion.  The rules require companies to restrict a range of topics on their services, comply with government takedown orders and identify the original source of information shared. If the companies fail to comply, tech firm employees can be held criminally liable.  The escalation of tensions between Modi’s government and tech firms, activists say, could result in the curtailment of Indians’ online speech.  “Absent a change in direction, the future of free speech in the world’s largest democracy is increasingly imperiled,” said Samir Jain, director of policy at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a digital rights advocacy group. “Users will have less freedom of expression and less access to news and entertainment that is unapproved by the government. The rules will thereby undermine Indian democracy,” Jain told VOA. At the center of the battle is Twitter, which asked for a three-month extension to comply with the new IT rules that went into effect May 25.  On May 24, New Delhi police attempted to deliver a notice to Twitter’s office, which was closed at the time, and then released a video of officers entering the building and searching the offices on local TV channels. #WATCH | Team of Delhi Police Special cell carrying out searches in the offices of Twitter India (in Delhi & Gurugram)Visuals from Lado Sarai. pic.twitter.com/eXipqnEBgt— ANI (@ANI) May 24, 2021In a tweet days later, Twitter said it was “concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve.”Right now, we are concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression for the people we serve.— Twitter Public Policy (@Policy) May 27, 2021“We, alongside many in civil society in India and around the world, have concerns with regards to the use of intimidation tactics by the police in response to enforcement of our global terms of service, as well as with core elements of the new IT rules,” the company said.  Earlier this month, the government sent a letter to Twitter saying it was giving the company “one final notice” adding that if Twitter fails to comply, there will be “unintended consequences,” according to NPR, which obtained the letter.  “It is beyond belief that Twitter Inc. has doggedly refused to create mechanisms that will enable the people of India to resolve their issues on the platform in a timely and transparent manner and through fair processes by India based clearly identified resources,” the letter said. The Indian government is pushing back on criticism that its new rules restrict online speech.  “Protecting free speech in India is not the prerogative of only a private, for-profit, foreign entity like Twitter, but it is the commitment of the world’s largest democracy and its robust institutions,” India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said in a statement. Some who are critical of the government’s new IT rules are also skeptical of the tech industry’s response.  It is “not an existential crisis as everyone will have us believe,” said Mishi Choudhary, a technology lawyer and founder of India’s Software Freedom Law Center. Choudhary said users will be forced to stay on the sidelines, rather than taking an active role in discussions about their basic rights.  “Some of the companies are still playing the game of ‘we are a sales office’ or ‘our servers are in California,’ frustrating anyone who comes to their legitimate defense as well,” Choudhary said.  India has a long tradition of free speech, and its tech savvy market is attractive for U.S. tech firms looking to expand. Although the Indian constitution protects certain rights to freedom of speech, it has restrictions. Expressions are banned that threaten “the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement to an offence.”Even before the recent tensions between tech firms and the government, India was among the top nations in the world seeking to restrict online speech. From Jan. 1, 2020, to June 1, 2020, India was one of the top five countries asking Twitter to remove content. For example, after violent protests on Jan. 26th involving farmers unhappy with new agricultural laws, the Modi government demanded Twitter block 500 accounts, including those of journalists, activists and opposition leaders. Twitter did so, and then eventually reversed course only to receive a noncompliance notice, according to a company statement. Several Indian journalists faced charges of sedition over their reporting and online posts following the protest by farmers. Among them is the executive editor of the Caravan magazine, Vinod K. Jose and although his Twitter handle is currently active, it was withheld in India this year.The official handle of @thecaravanindia is withheld in India: pic.twitter.com/2t4FV5IgM0— Vinod K. Jose (@vinodjose) February 1, 2021The government is also particularly sensitive about criticism of its handling of the coronavirus, asking that social media firms remove mention of the B.1617 variant as the “Indian variant.”  In May, the government ordered social media firms to remove any mention of the Indian variant. The variant first reported in India is now called Delta, according to the World Health Organization. Earlier this month, Twitter complied with a request from the government to block the Twitter account of Punjabi-born Jaswinder Singh Bains, alias JazzyB, a rapper. While Twitter informed him that he had been blocked for reportedly violating India’s Information Technology Act, he said he believes he was blocked for supporting the farmers in their protests, according to media reports. Jason Pielemeier, director of policy and strategy at the Global Network Initiative, an alliance of tech companies supporting freedom of expression online, wrote to the MeitY, Pielemeier calling attention to many issues with the new rules.  “Each of these concerns on its own can negatively impact freedom of expression and privacy in India,” he wrote. “Together, they create significant risk of undermining digital rights and trust in India’s regulatory approach to the digital ecosystem.” Twitter isn’t the only tech firm affected by new laws. WhatsApp, the encrypted messaging app owned by Facebook, filed a lawsuit in May against the Indian government arguing that the new rules allow for “mass surveillance.” According to the lawsuit, the new rules are illegal and “severely undermine” the right to privacy of its users.At issue for WhatsApp is that under the new rules, encryption would have to be removed, and according to The Guardian, messages would have to be in a “traceable” database. 
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A mystery bidder paid $28 million at auction Saturday for a seat alongside Jeff Bezos on board the first crewed spaceflight of the billionaire’s company Blue Origin next month.The Amazon founder revealed this week that both he and his brother Mark would take seats on board the company’s New Shepard launch vehicle on July 20, to fly to the edge of space and back.The Bezos brothers will be joined by the winner of Saturday’s charity auction, whose identity remains unknown, and by a fourth, as yet unnamed space tourist.”The name of the auction winner will be released in the weeks following the auction’s conclusion,” tweeted Blue Origin following the sale.”Then, the fourth and final crew member will be announced — stay tuned.”Saturday’s successful bidder beat out some 20 rivals in an auction launched on May 19 and wrapped up with a 10-minute, livecast frenzy.Bidding had reached $4.8 million by Thursday, but shot up spectacularly in the final live auction, rising by million-dollar increments.The proceeds — aside from a 6% auctioneer’s commission — will go to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, which aims to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.Taking off from a desert in western Texas, the New Shepard trip will last 10 minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.After lift-off, the capsule separates from its booster, then spends four minutes at an altitude exceeding 100 kilometers, during which time those on board experience weightlessness and can observe the curvature of Earth.The booster lands autonomously on a pad 3.2 kilometers from the launch site, and the capsule floats back to the surface with three large parachutes that slow it down to about 1.6 kph when it lands.Lifelong dreamBezos, who announced earlier this year he is stepping down as Amazon’s chief executive to spend more time on other projects including Blue Origin, has said it was a lifelong dream to fly into space.Blue Origin’s New Shepard has successfully carried out more than a dozen uncrewed test runs from its facility in Texas’ Guadalupe Mountains.”We’re ready to fly some astronauts,” said Blue Origin’s director of astronaut and orbital sales, Ariane Cornell, on Saturday.The reusable suborbital rocket system was named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space 60 years ago.The automated capsules with no pilot have six seats with horizontal backrests placed next to large portholes, in a futuristic cabin with swish lighting. Multiple cameras help immortalize the few minutes the space tourists experience weightlessness.Private space raceBlue Origin’s maiden crewed flight comes in a context of fierce competition in the field of private space exploration — with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, all jostling for pole position.Bezos has a very public rivalry with Musk, whose SpaceX is planning orbital flights that would cost millions of dollars and send people much further into space.SpaceX has already begun to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and is a competitor for government space contracts.Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, hopes to begin regular commercial suborbital flights in early 2022, with eventual plans for 400 trips a year.Some 600 people have booked flights, costing $200,000 to $250,000 — and there has been talk of Branson himself taking part in a test flight this summer, although no date has been set.
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Google has promised to give U.K. regulators a role overseeing its plan to phase out existing ad-tracking technology from its Chrome browser as part of a competition investigation into the tech giant.     The U.K. competition watchdog has been investigating Google’s proposals to remove so-called third-party cookies over concerns they would undermine digital ad competition and entrench the company’s market power.     To address the concerns, Google on Friday offered a set of commitments including giving the Competition and Markets Authority an oversight role as the company designs and develops a replacement technology.    “The emergence of tech giants such as Google has presented competition authorities around the world with new challenges that require a new approach,” Andrea Coscelli, the watchdog’s chief executive, said.     The Competition and Markets Authority will work with tech companies to “shape their behavior and protect competition to the benefit of consumers,” he said.  The promises also include “substantial limits” on how Google will use and combine individual user data for digital ad purposes and a pledge not to discriminate against rivals in favor of its own ad businesses with the new technology.     If Google’s commitments are accepted, they will be applied globally, the company said in a blog post.     Third-party cookies – snippets of code that log user info – are used to help businesses more effectively target advertising and fund free online content such as newspapers. However, they’ve also been a longstanding source of privacy concerns because they can be used to track users across the internet.     Google shook up the digital ad industry with its plan to do away with third-party cookies, which raised fears newer technology would leave even less room for online ad rivals. 
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Ransomware cases are on the rise worldwide and criminal groups based in Russia are suspected of being behind some of the biggest recent attacks. Michelle Quinn reports on the changing world of ransomware.Camera: Matt DibbleProduced by: Michelle Quinn
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Ransomware cases are on the rise worldwide and criminal groups based in Russia are suspected of being behind some of the biggest recent attacks. Michelle Quinn reports on the changing world of ransomware.Camera: Matt DibbleProduced by: Michelle Quinn
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The United States may soon look to regulate private companies, mandating higher standards for cybersecurity following a series of damaging hacks and ransomware attacks against key firms and critical infrastructure.U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominees to fill two top cyber roles in his administration warned Thursday that malign actors are currently operating with impunity and that too many private sector organizations have, so far, failed to take the necessary precautions.FILE – In this June 8, 2013 photo, Chris Inglis, then deputy director of the National Security Agency testifies on Capitol Hill. Inglis is being nominated as the government’s first national cyber director at the Department of Homeland Security.”Enlightened self-interest, that’s apparently not working,” Chris Inglis, tapped to be the country’s first national cyber director, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Market forces, that’s apparently not working.””When they’re conducting critical activities upon which the nation’s interests depend, it may well be we need to step in and we need to regulate or mandate in the same way we’ve done that for the aviation industry or the automobile industry,” he added.Jen Easterly, nominated to head up the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, agreed.”As a nation, we remain at great risk of a catastrophic cyberattack,” she said. “It seems to me that voluntary standards are probably not getting the job done and that there is probably some sort of role for making some of these standards mandatory, to include notification.”The question of how best to take on a range of cyberthreats, from state-sponsored hackers to ransomware networks, has been thrust into the spotlight following a series of high-profile attacks in recent months, starting with discovery of the hack of SolarWinds, a Texas-based software management company, last December.That breach, described by U.S. intelligence agencies as a Russian espionage operation, exposed as many as 18,000 A JBS meatpacking plant is seen in Plainwell, Michigan, June 2, 2021.More recently, ransomware networks forced Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, pauses to speak with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, June 10, 2021.”Congress needs to act,” Mark Warner, the Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Axios Thursday at a virtual event, when asked about the recent attacks.”The Biden administration has moved aggressively, but they can only do a certain amount of things,” Warner said. “We need to put this mandatory reporting bill in place.”Last month, Biden signed an executive order that requires internet service providers to share certain information about breaches into their networks, mandates higher standards for software development, and creates a playbook for how government agencies should respond to a breach.On Thursday, Inglis told lawmakers that the recent series of high-profile hacks and ransomware attacks “signal the urgent need to secure our national critical infrastructure” and that if confirmed as national cyber director, he would work to strengthen not just the technology but the people using the technology, as well.”What we need to do is make these systems defensible — they’ll never be secure,” Inglis said. “We need to then defend them … such that we can change the decision calculus of adversaries.”Every one of us needs to learn how to cross the cyber street in the same way we learned to cross a physical street when we were young,” he added.
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The U.S. has condemned Nigeria’s continuing ban of Twitter in the country, saying the action “has no place in a democracy.”“Freedom of expression and access to information both online and offline are foundational to prosperous and secure democratic societies,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday in a statement calling for the African nation to reverse its Twitter suspension.He said the U.S. “condemns the ongoing suspension of Twitter by the Nigerian government and subsequent threats to arrest and prosecute Nigerians who use Twitter. The United States is likewise concerned that the Nigerian National Broadcasting Commission ordered all television and radio broadcasters to cease using Twitter.”The U.S. had joined the European Union, Britain, Ireland and Canada last weekend in criticizing the Nigerian action. The Abuja government indefinitely banned Twitter after the U.S. social media company deleted a tweet from President Muhammadu Buhari’s account for violating its rules.Tweet about unrestBuhari’s tweet referred to the country’s civil war four decades ago in a warning about recent unrest, referring to “those misbehaving” in violence in the southeastern part of the country. Officials there blame the prohibited separatist group IPOB for attacks on police and election offices.”Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand,” the president had posted on Twitter.Buhari’s office denied the Twitter suspension was a response to the removal of that post.”There has been a litany of problems with the social media platform in Nigeria, where misinformation and fake news spread through it have had real-world violent consequences,” presidency spokesperson Garba Shehu said in a statement.Shehu said the removal of Buhari’s tweet was “disappointing” and that “major tech companies must be alive to their responsibilities.”Twitter said it was working to restore the social media network in Nigeria, but government officials warned they would prosecute violators.
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A “swarm” of bug-tracking drones and tiny radars are being developed to help conservation of rare insects in New Zealand.  The new tag-and-track technology is being developed at the University of Canterbury on New Zealand’s South Island. Researchers hope it could lead to a deeper understanding of New Zealand’s threatened and endangered insects. The research draws on years of experience in the area of bird conservation, where radio tracking methods have helped to protect many vulnerable species. Experts have said that at a stretch the technology could also be used to study large invertebrates such as giant land snails but was simply too big and heavy for most insects. Researchers have now made about 20 tiny so-called harmonic radar tags that are fitted to insects. They would then be tracked by a “swarm” of drones. Steve Pawson, from the university’s College of Engineering, says bird-tracking technology has been a major inspiration. “They have been doing radio tracking on many of these species over several decades now and the information that they learn from that really informs the conservation management. So, understanding how far do these things move, where do they go foraging, what are their foraging behaviors? Even things as simple as how long things live for. Unfortunately, the radio tracking technologies that are out there at the moment are too heavy to use on small insects. There is only a handful of our heaviest insects that can carry those and so we are really limited in our understanding of how invertebrates are moving through the environment, and if we have that knowledge then we can incorporate it in our decision making and our planning for conservation management operations,” Pawson said.  Trials will start on ground-based insects before the New Zealand team tries to tackle the complexities of tracking insects in flight. Field testing could begin in 2023. Academics have said the study could also have applications in other disciplines, from biosecurity to medical imaging. Among New Zealand’s endangered insects is the iconic Wētā. They are one of the South Pacific nation’s most recognizable creatures with their large bodies, spiny legs, and curved tusks.  Several species of Wētā are under threat from predation by birds and reptiles, and habitat loss. 
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Former president Donald Trump’s executive order that attempted to ban Chinese video app TikTok has been replaced by the Biden administration, which has implemented its own executive orders to review several Chinese apps for possible national security and privacy risks. President Joe Biden’s executive order directs the Commerce Department to analyze TikTok, WeChat and other Chinese apps to see if they collect personal data or if they are connected to the Chinese military. According to a White House statement about the order, Commerce, in consultation with other federal agencies, can “make recommendations to protect against harm from the sale, transfer of, or access to sensitive personal data, including personally identifiable information and genetic information — to include large data repositories — to persons owned or controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of, foreign adversaries.”  
“The administration is committed to promoting an open, interoperable, reliable, and secure internet and to protecting human rights online and offline, and to supporting a vibrant global digital economy,” a senior administration official said Wednesday, according to The Verge, which first reported the story. “The challenge that we’re addressing with this [executive order] is that certain countries, including China, do not share these commitments or values and are instead working to leverage digital technologies and American data in ways that present unacceptable national security risks,” the official added. Trump’s efforts to ban TikTok in the summer of 2020 were blocked by the courts, and the issue was soon overshadowed by the 2020 presidential election. US Judge Halts Government Ban on TikTok Trump administration wants TikTok and WeChat removed from app stores  
Discussions that a U.S. company might take over TikTok operations in the U.S. never resulted in concrete action. 
 
Last week, the Biden administration expanded a Trump-era ban on American companies investing in Chinese firms with ties to the Chinese military. The order lists 59 Chinese companies that reportedly develop surveillance technology to be used against Muslim minorities and pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong. 
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Facebook’s recent decision to ban former president Donald Trump for two years sends a message to world leaders that Facebook is stepping up its role as sheriff on its service. Tina Trinh reports.Produced by Tina Trinh
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The Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday that aims to boost U.S. semiconductor production and the development of artificial intelligence and other technology in the face of growing international competition, most notably from China. The 68-32 vote for the bill demonstrates how confronting China economically is an issue that unites both parties in Congress. That’s a rarity in an era of division as pressure grows on Democrats to change Senate rules to push past Republican opposition and gridlock. The centerpiece of the bill is a $50 billion emergency allotment to the Commerce Department to stand up semiconductor development and manufacturing through research and incentive programs previously authorized by Congress. The bill’s overall cost would increase spending by about $250 billion with most of the spending occurring in the first five years. Supporters described it as the biggest investment in scientific research that the country has seen in decades. It comes as the nation’s share of semiconductor manufacturing globally has steadily eroded from 37% in 1990 to about 12% now, and as a chip shortage has exposed vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain. FILE – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks at the Capitol in Washington, March 6, 2021.”The premise is simple — if we want American workers and American companies to keep leading the world, the federal government must invest in science, basic research and innovation, just as we did decades after the Second World War,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.”Whoever wins the race to the technologies of the future is going to be the global economic leader, with profound consequences for foreign policy and national security, as well,” he added. FILE – U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 25, 2021.Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the bill was incomplete because it did not incorporate more Republican-sponsored amendments. He nonetheless supported it. “Needless to say, final passage of this legislation cannot be the Senate’s final word on our competition with China,” he said. “It certainly won’t be mine.” President Joe Biden applauded the bill’s passage in a statement Tuesday evening, saying, “As other countries continue to invest in their own research and development, we cannot risk falling behind. America must maintain its position as the most innovative and productive nation on Earth.”  Senators slogged through days of debates and amendments leading up to Tuesday’s final vote. Schumer’s office said 18 Republican amendments will have received votes as part of passage of the bill. It also said the Senate this year has already held as many roll-call votes on amendments than it did in the last Congress when the Senate was under Republican control. While the bill enjoys bipartisan support, a core group of Republican senators has reservations about its costs. One of the bill’s provisions would create a new directorate focused on artificial intelligence and quantum science with the National Science Foundation. The bill would authorize up to $29 billion over five years for the new branch within the foundation, with an additional $52 billion for its programs. Senator Rand Paul said Congress should be cutting the foundation’s budget, not increasing it. He called the agency “the king of wasteful spending.” The agency finances about a quarter of all federally supported research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. “The bill is nothing more than a big government response that will make our country weaker, not stronger,” Paul said. FILE – Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 5, 2020.But Senator Maria Cantwell noted that a greater federal investment in the physical sciences had been called for during the administration of President George W. Bush to ensure U.S. economic competitiveness. “At the time, I’m pretty sure we thought we were in a track meet where our competitor was, oh, I don’t know, maybe half a lap behind us. I’m pretty sure now as the decade has moved on, we’re looking over our shoulder and realizing that the competition is gaining,” said Cantwell, chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. The lead Republican on the committee also weighed in to support the bill. “This is an opportunity for the United States to strike a blow on behalf of answering the unfair competition that we are seeing from communist China,” Senator Roger Wicker said. Senators have tried to strike a balance when calling attention to China’s growing influence. They want to avoid fanning divisive anti-Asian rhetoric when hate crimes against Asian Americans have spiked during the coronavirus pandemic. Other measures spell out national security concerns and target money-laundering schemes or cyberattacks by entities on behalf of the Chinese government. There are also “Buy America” provisions for infrastructure projects in the U.S.  Senators added provisions that reflect shifting attitudes toward China’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. One would prevent federal money for the Wuhan Institute of Virology as fresh investigations proceed into the origins of the virus and possible connections to the lab’s research. The city registered some of the first coronavirus cases. It’s unclear whether the measure will find support in the Democratic-led House, where the Science Committee is expected to soon consider that chamber’s version. Congressman Ro Khanna, who has been working with Schumer for two years on legislation that’s included in the bill, called it the biggest investment in science and technology since the Apollo space flight program a half century ago. “I’m quite certain we will get a really good product on the president’s desk,” Schumer said. Biden said he looked forward to working with the House on the legislation, “and I look forward to signing it into law as soon as possible.” 
 
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A number of major websites could not be reached early Tuesday following an outage at the cloud services company Fastly.The affected sites included news agencies CNN, the Guardian and the New York Times, streaming platform Twitch, and the U.K. government’s website.All were back online within a period of hours.Fastly said it identified an issue and that “and a fix is being implemented.”The company earlier said it was “investigating potential impact to performance with our CDN services.”
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Apple on Monday said a new “private relay” feature designed to obscure a user’s web browsing behavior from internet service providers and advertisers will not be available in China for regulatory reasons.The feature was one of a number of privacy protections Apple announced at its annual software developer conference Monday.It will also be unavailable in Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda and the Philippines, Apple said.The “private relay” feature first sends web traffic to a server maintained by Apple, where it is stripped of its IP address. From there, Apple sends the traffic to a second server maintained by a third-party operator who assigns the user a temporary IP address and sends the traffic onward to its destination website.The use of an outside party in the second hop of the relay system is intentional, Apple said, to prevent even Apple from knowing both the user’s identity and what website the user is visiting.Apple has not yet disclosed which outside partners it will use in the system but said it plans to disclose them in the future. The feature will not likely become available to the public until later this year. 
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U.S. law enforcement officials say they have hit back at the Russian-based criminal network that caused gas pipelines to shut down across parts of the country last month, seizing much of the multimillion-dollar ransom payment before it could be used.The Justice Department announced Monday it recovered $2.3 million of the approximately $5 million Colonial Pipeline paid to the DarkSide Network following the ransomware attack, which resulted in fuel shortages along the U.S. East Coast.“We turned the tables on DarkSide,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, describing the seizure as a “significant development.”“Ransomware attacks are always unacceptable, but when they target critical infrastructure, we will spare no effort in our response,” she added.Tanker trucks are parked near the entrance of Colonial Pipeline Company, May 12, 2021, in Charlotte, N.C.Colonial Pipeline, the target of DarkSide’s May 7 attack, is the top fuel pipeline operator in the U.S., responsible for about half of the fuel supply for the East Coast.Following the attack, the company made the decision to meet DarkSide’s demands, paying out about $5 million in Bitcoin cryptocurrency. But U.S. government officials said Colonial also worked closely with law enforcement agencies, who were able to track the payment to a virtual wallet.Specifically, officials said they were able to obtain a virtual key that unlocked the contents of the wallet.As a result, the Justice Department said it was able to recover about 80% of the cryptocurrency, which has dropped in value in recent weeks, before DarkSide could access it.“We deprived a cybercriminal enterprise of the object of their activity,” said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate. “For financially motivated cybercriminals, especially those presumably located overseas, cutting off access to revenue is one of the most impactful consequences we can impose.”Officials said this is not the first time they have been able to recover ransom payment made to groups like DarkSide, and encouraged other companies to cooperate with the government if they are targeted.“The message we are sending today is that if you come forward and work with law enforcement, we may be able to take the type of action that we took today to deprive the criminal actors of what they’re going after,” Monaco said.But she added that this type of operation is a “significant undertaking” and “we cannot guarantee, and we may not be able to do this, in every instance.”The FBI has been investigating DarkSide since last October, blaming the network for attacks against 90 victims across critical sectors such as manufacturing, health care and energy.DarkSide and its affiliates have also been connected to ransomware attacks in at least 14 other countries. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported the group made almost $60 million in seven months, including $46 million in the first three months of this year.In a statement late Monday, Colonial Pipeline President Joseph Blount said the company was grateful for the help from both the Justice Department and the FBI, calling them “instrumental in helping us to understand the threat actor and their tactics.”“Holding cyber criminals accountable and disrupting the ecosystem that allows them to operate is the best way to deter and defend against future attacks of this nature,” Blount added. “As our investigation into this event continues, Colonial will continue its transparency in sharing intelligence and learnings with the FBI and other federal agencies.”The Justice Department announcement also earned praise from some private cybersecurity firms, with one calling the seizure of the ransom payment a “welcome development.”“In addition to the immediate benefits of this approach, a stronger focus on disruption may disincentivize this behavior, which is growing in a vicious cycle,” John Hultquist, vice president of analysis at Mandiant, said in a statement. “Law enforcement agencies need to broaden their approach beyond building cases against criminals who may be beyond the grasp of the law.”U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to raise the issue of the DarkSide ransomware attack when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, next week.Biden has previously said Moscow bears “some responsibility” to deal with the attack.“The president’s message will be that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals, and responsible countries take decisive action against these ransomware networks,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week.National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that Biden will also use meetings next week with G-7 leaders to discuss “increasing the robustness and resilience of our defense against ransomware attacks.”Sullivan said the U.S. also hopes to discuss ways to better share information about ransomware attacks.Information from Reuters was used in this report.
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Western military experts are assessing whether an autonomous drone operated by artificial intelligence, or AI, killed people — in Libya last year — for the first time without a human controller directing it remotely to do so.
 
A report by a United Nations panel of experts issued last week that concluded an advanced drone deployed in Libya “hunted down and remotely engaged” soldiers fighting for Libyan general Khalifa Haftar has prompted a frenetic debate among Western security officials and analysts.  
 
Governments at the United Nations have been debating for months whether a global pact should be agreed on the use of armed drones, autonomous and otherwise, and what restrictions should be placed on them. The U.N.’s Libya report is adding urgency to the debate. Drone advances have “a lot of implications regionally and globally,” says Ziya Meral of the Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a defense think tank.
 
“It is time to assess where things are with Turkish drones and advanced warfare technology and what this means for the region and what it means for NATO,” he said at a RUSI-hosted event in London.  
 
According to the U.N. report, Turkish-made Kargu-2 lethal autonomous aircraft launched so-called swarm attacks, likely on behalf of Libya’s Government of National Accord, against the warlord Haftar’s militias in March last year, marking the first time AI-equipped drones accomplished a successful attack. Remnants of a Kargu-2 were recovered later.  
 
The use of autonomous drones that do not require human operators to guide them remotely once they have been programmed is opposed by many human rights organizations. There were rumors that Turkish-supplied AI drones, alongside remote-guided ones, were used last year by Azerbaijani forces in their clashes with Armenia in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and its surrounding territories.
 Myriad of dilemmas
If AI drones did launch lethal swarm attacks it would mark a “new chapter in autonomous weapons,” worries the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Critics of AI drones, which can use facial-recognition technology, say they raise a number of moral, ethical and legal dilemmas.  
 
“These types of weapons operate on software-based algorithms ‘taught’ through large training datasets to, for example, classify various objects. Computer vision programs can be trained to identify school buses, tractors, and tanks. But the datasets they train on may not be sufficiently complex or robust, and an artificial intelligence (AI) may ‘learn’ the wrong lesson,” the non-profit Bulletin warns.  
 
The manufacturer of the Kargu-2, Defense Technologies and Trade (STM), told Turkish media last year that their drones are equipped with facial-recognition technology, allowing individual targets to be identified and neutralized without having to deploy ground forces. And company executives say Kargu-2 drones can swarm together overwhelming defenses.
 
Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lauded the success of Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), saying the results they had produced “require war strategies to be rewritten.” Turkey has deployed them in military operations in northern Syria, Turkish officials have acknowledged.  
 
Speaking at a parliamentary meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey plans to go further and is aiming to be among the first countries to develop an AI-managed warplane. Recently the chief technology officer of Baykar, a major Turkish drone manufacturer, announced the company had slated 2023 for the maiden flight of its prototype unmanned fighter jet.
 ‘A significant player’
Sanctions and embargoes on Turkey in recent years have been a major driving force behind Ankara pressing ahead to develop a new generation of unconventional weapons, says Ulrike Franke of the European Council for Foreign Relations. “Turkey has become a significant player in the global drone market,” she said at the RUSI event. When it comes to armed drones, she noted, there are four states dominating drone development — the U.S., Israel, China and Turkey. The latter pair, the “new kids on the block,” are driving drone proliferation because unlike the U.S. they are not reticent about export sales, she said.  
 
“Turkey has shown that a mid-sized power, when it puts its mind and money behind it, can develop very sophisticated armed drones,” says Franke.
 
Last October when the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh saw the worst fighting there since 1994, Turkish drones were assessed as having given Azerbaijan a key edge over the Armenians. Turkish drones sliced through Armenia’s air defenses and pummeled its Russian-made tanks.  
 
Analysts calculate around 90 countries have military drones for reconnaissance and intelligence missions and at least a dozen states have armed drones. Britain is believed to have ten; Turkey around 140. The U.S. air force has around 300 Reaper drones alone. The deployment of armed drones to conduct targeted killings outside formal war zones has been highly contentious. But AI drone development is adding to global alarm.
 
“With more and more countries acquiring armed drones, there is a risk that the controversies surrounding how drones are used and the challenges these pose to international legal frameworks, as well as to democratic values such as transparency, accountability and the rule of law, could also increase,” Britain’s Chatham House noted in a research paper published in April.  
 
“This is accentuated further, given that the use of drones continues to expand and to evolve in new ways, and in the absence of a distinct legal framework to regulate such use,” say the paper’s authors Jessica Dorsey and Nilza Amaral.   
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A slew of crypto-related accounts in China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform were blocked over the weekend, as Beijing stepped up a crackdown on bitcoin trading and mining. More actions are expected, including linking illegal crypto activities in China more directly with the country’s criminal law, according to analysts and a financial regulator. Last month, China’s State Council, or cabinet, vowed to crack down on bitcoin mining and trading, escalating a campaign against cryptocurrencies days after three industry bodies banned crypto-related financial and payment services. Over the weekend, access to several of widely followed crypto-related Weibo accounts was denied, with a message saying each account “violates laws and rules.” “It’s a Judgment Day for crypto KOL,” wrote a Weibo bitcoin commentator, or key opinion leader (KOL), who calls herself “Woman Dr. bitcoin mini.” Her main account was also blocked on Saturday. “The government makes it clear that no Chinese version of Elon Musk can exist in the Chinese crypto market,” said NYU Law School adjunct professor Winston Ma, referring to the Tesla founder and cryptocurrency enthusiast. Ma, author of the book “The Digital War,” also expects China’s supreme court to publish a judicial interpretation soon that may link crypto mining and trading businesses with China’s body of criminal law. The view was echoed by a financial regulator, who said that such an interpretation would address the legal ambiguity that has failed to clearly identify bitcoin trading businesses as “illegal operations.” All the rules against cryptocurrencies so far in China have been published by administrative bodies. The Weibo freeze comes as Chinese media have stepped up reporting against crypto trading. The official Xinhua News Agency has published articles that exposed a series of crypto-related scams. State broadcaster CCTV has said cryptocurrency is a lightly regulated asset often used in black market trade, money laundering, arms smuggling, gambling and drug dealings. The stepped-up crackdown also comes as China’s central bank is accelerating testing of its own digital currency. 
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Microsoft Corp. blamed “accidental human error” for its Bing search engine briefly not showing image results for the search term “tank man” on the anniversary of the bloody military crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.Users in different parts of the world, including the U.S., said Friday that no image results were returned when they searched for the term “tank man.””Tank man” refers to the iconic image of a standoff between an unidentified civilian and a line of military tanks leaving Beijing’s Tiananmen Square after a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. The photo has become a symbol of defiance around the world.After being alerted by reporters, Microsoft said in a statement that the issue was “due to an accidental human error and has been resolved.” Hours later, images of “tank man” photographs were returned by the search engine.The company did not elaborate on what the human error was or how it had happened. Nor did it say how much of its Bing development team is China-based. The company’s  largest research and development center outside the United States is in China, and it posted a job in January for a China-based senior software engineer to lead a team that develops the technology powering Bing image search.Chinese authorities require search engines, websites and social media platforms operating within the country to censor keywords and results deemed politically sensitive or critical of the Chinese government.References to the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 are blocked in China, as are images relating to the event, such as “tank man.”Microsoft’s Bing is one of the few international search engines that operate in China, where it abides by local censorship laws and competes with larger Chinese search engines such as Baidu and Sogou.Bing has a 2.5% market share in China, according to data site Statcounter.Rival Google exited the Chinese market in 2010 after four years of operation, following disputes over censorship and a major hacking attack that Google believes originated in China.
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Millions of Nigerians struggled Saturday to access Twitter, a day after authorities suspended the service in response to the company’s deletion of a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari for violating its terms of service.The Twitter ban took effect Saturday morning. Millions of users in Lagos and Abuja said they were unable to access their accounts.Authorities said Friday that they had banned Twitter because it was persistently being used “for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”Twitter responded to the ban, saying it was “deeply concerning.”‘Reverse the unlawful suspension’Many citizens and rights groups objected to the ban. Amnesty International said it was a threat to free speech and must be reversed without delay. “Amnesty International condemns the Nigerian government’s suspension of Twitter in Nigeria,” said Seun Bakare, a spokesperson for the organization. Bakare said Amnesty had called on Nigerian authorities “to immediately reverse the unlawful suspension and other plans to gag the media, to repress the civic space and to undermine human rights of the people. The Nigerian government has an obligation to protect and promote International human rights laws and standards.”FILE – Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari attends a press briefing in Pretoria, South Africa, Oct. 3, 2019.The ban mostly affected the country’s largest network providers, MTN and Airtel.Some users Saturday were able to access Twitter using Wi-Fi connections. Others were avoiding the shutdown by using virtual private networks that make them appear to be using Twitter from another country.VPN providers have since Friday seen a surge in usage. Abuja resident Basil Akpakavir was among Twitter users getting around the government ban.”They are relentless in their intolerant attitude toward people that have contrary opinion to theirs,” Akpakavir said. “But the truth is that we’re equal to the task, as well. Whichever way they want it, we’re going to give it to them. We want a Nigeria that is prosperous, that is built on the tenets of true democracy.”Separatist group singled outBuhari had threatened earlier in the week to crack down on separatist group Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), in a manner similar to the civil war waged in 1967 when 3 million Biafrans were estimated to have died in battle against the Nigerian government.The president’s tweet was criticized as a war threat to separatist groups, and Twitter deleted it.Amnesty’s Bakare said the government must be held accountable for comments capable of instigating division and violence.”It is important that government platforms, and in this particular instance the president, do not invite violence or division,” Bakare said. “The government must be alive to the increased tensions in the country, given the spate of insecurity.”The Nigerian government has often attempted to regulate the use of social media to reduce criticism.Late last year, the government proposed a social media regulation bill after the End SARS protests against police brutality, when social media were used by young Nigerians to mobilize and challenge what they said was bad governance.
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Foreign keyboard criminals with scant fear of repercussions have paralyzed U.S. schools and hospitals, leaked highly sensitive police files, triggered fuel shortages and, most recently, threatened global food supply chains.Escalating havoc caused by ransomware gangs raises an obvious question: Why has the United States, believed to have the world’s greatest cyber capabilities, looked so powerless to protect its citizens from these kind of criminals operating with near impunity out of Russia and allied countries?The answer is that there are numerous technological, legal and diplomatic hurdles to going after ransomware gangs. Until recently, it just hasn’t been a high priority for the U.S. government.That has changed as the problem has grown well beyond an economic nuisance. President Joe Biden intends to confront Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, about Moscow’s harboring of ransomware criminals when the two men meet in Europe later this month. The Biden administration has also promised to boost defenses against attacks, improve efforts to prosecute those responsible and build diplomatic alliances to pressure countries that harbor ransomware gangs.Calls are growing for the administration to direct U.S. intelligence agencies and the military to attack ransomware gangs’ technical infrastructure used for hacking, posting sensitive victim data on the dark web and storing digital currency payouts.Fighting ransomware requires the nonlethal equivalent of the “global war on terrorism” launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, said John Riggi, a former FBI agent and senior adviser for cybersecurity and risk for the America Hospital Association. Its members have been hard hit by ransomware gangs during the coronavirus pandemic.”It should include a combination of diplomatic, financial, law enforcement, intelligence operations, of course, and military operations,” Riggi said.A public-private task force including Microsoft and Amazon made similar suggestions in an 81-page report that called for intelligence agencies and the Pentagon’s U.S. Cyber Command to work with other agencies to “prioritize ransomware disruption operations.””Take their infrastructure away, go after their wallets, their ability to cash out,” said Philip Reiner, a lead author of the report. He worked at the National Security Council during the Obama presidency and is now CEO at The Institute for Security and Technology.A JBS Processing Plant stands dormant after halting operations on June 1, 2021, in Greeley, Colorado. JBS facilities around the globe were impacted by a ransomware attack, forcing many of its facilities to shut down.But the difficulties of taking down ransomware gangs and other cybercriminals have long been clear. The FBI’s list of most-wanted cyber fugitives has grown at a rapid clip and now has more than 100 entries, many of whom are not exactly hiding. Evgeniy Bogachev, indicted nearly a decade ago for what prosecutors say was a wave of cyber bank thefts, lives in a Russian resort town and “is known to enjoy boating” on the Black Sea, according to the FBI’s wanted listing.Ransomware gangs can move around, do not need much infrastructure to operate and can shield their identities. They also operate in a decentralized network. For instance, DarkSide, the group responsible for the Colonial Pipeline attack that led to fuel shortages in the South, rents out its ransomware software to partners to carry out attacks.Katie Nickels, director of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm Red Canary, said identifying and disrupting ransomware criminals takes time and serious effort.”A lot of people misunderstand that the government can’t just willy-nilly go out and press a button and say, well, nuke that computer,” she said. “Trying to attribute to a person in cyberspace is not an easy task, even for intelligence communities.”Reiner said those limits do not mean the United States cannot still make progress against defeating ransomware, comparing it with America’s ability to degrade the terrorist group al-Qaida while not capturing its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over after U.S. troops killed Osama bin Laden.”We can fairly easily make the argument that al-Qaida no longer poses a threat to the homeland,” Reiner said. “So, short of getting al-Zawahiri, you destroy his ability to actually operate. That’s what you can do to these [ransomware] guys.”The White House has been vague about whether it plans to use offensive cyber measures against ransomware gangs. Press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that “we’re not going to take options off the table,” but she did not elaborate. Her comments followed a ransomware attack by a Russian gang that caused outages at Brazil’s JBS SA, the second-largest producer of beef, pork and chicken in the United States.FILE – Tanker trucks are parked near the entrance of Colonial Pipeline Company, May 12, 2021, in Charlotte, N.C. The operator of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline paid $4.4 million to a gang of hackers who broke into its computer systems.Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, said at a recent symposium that he believes the U.S. will be “bringing the weight of our nation,” including the Defense Department, “to take down this [ransomware] infrastructure outside the United States.”Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who is a legislative leader on cybersecurity issues, said the debate in Congress over how aggressive the U.S. needs to be against ransomware gangs, as well as state adversaries, will be “front and center of the next month or two.””To be honest, it’s complicated because you’re talking about using government agencies, government capabilities to go after private citizens in another country,” he said.The U.S. is widely believed to have the best offensive cyber capabilities in the world, though details about such highly classified activities are scant. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the U.S. conducted 231 offensive cyber operations in 2011. More than a decade ago a virus called Stuxnet attacked control units for centrifuges in an underground site in Iran, causing the sensitive devices to spin out of control and destroy themselves. The cyberattack was attributed to America and Israel.U.S. policy called “persistent engagement” already authorizes cyberwarriors to engage hostile hackers in cyberspace and disrupt their operations with code. U.S. Cyber Command has launched offensive operations related to election security, including against Russian misinformation officials during U.S. midterm elections in 2018.After the Colonial Pipeline attack, Biden promised that his administration was committed to bringing foreign cybercriminals to justice. Yet even as he was speaking from the White House, a different Russian-linked ransomware gang was leaking thousands of highly sensitive internal files — including deeply personal background checks — belonging to the police department in the nation’s capital. Experts believe it’s the worst ransomware attack against a U.S.-based law enforcement agency.”We are not afraid of anyone,” the hackers wrote in a follow-up post. 
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Nigeria’s government said Friday it was suspending Twitter indefinitely in Africa’s most populous nation, a day after the company deleted a controversial tweet President Muhammadu Buhari made about a secessionist movement.It was not immediately clear when the suspension would go into effect as users could still access Twitter late Friday, and many said they would simply use VPNs to maintain access to the platform.Others mocked the government for using the platform to announce the action.”You’re using Twitter to suspend Twitter? Are you not mad?” one user tweeted in response.Information Minister Lai Mohammed said Friday that government officials took the step because the platform was being used “for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”Mohammed criticized Twitter for deleting the post. “The mission of Twitter in Nigeria is very suspicious,” he said, adding that Twitter had in the past ignored “inciting” tweets against the Nigerian government.Twitter deleted Buhari’s post on Wednesday, calling it abusive, after the president threatened suspected separatist militants in the southeast.More than 1 million people died during the 1967-70 civil war that erupted when secessionists sought to create an independent Biafra for the ethnic Igbo people. Buhari, an ethnic Fulani, was on the opposing side in the war against the Igbos.In recent months, pro-Biafra separatists have been accused of attacking police and government buildings, and Buhari vowed to retaliate and “treat them in the language they understand.”
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