Category Archives: Department of Homeland Security

McCaul’s Homeland Terror Threat Snapshot

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McCaul Releases February Terror Threat Snapshot

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The February Terror Threat Snapshot was released today by Homeland Security Committee (HSC) Chairman Michael McCaul. The “snapshot” is a monthly Committee assessment of the growing threat America, the West, and the world face from ISIS and other Islamist terrorists.

Chairman McCaul: “The Islamist terror threat remains alarmingly high as recent arrests and terror plots demonstrate. ISIS recruits wage war in our communities, while thousands of deadly fighters trained in Syria stream back into the West – some of them infiltrating massive refugee flows. ISIS continues its global expansion on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the still-dangerous al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula seizes greater territory in Yemen. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin and the revitalized Iran-Assad-Hezbollah terror axis are further destabilizing the Syrian crisis in the absence of U.S. leadership. This year is on track to be as dangerous as – if not worse than – 2015 for the American homeland and our national security.”

Key takeaways in this month’s Terror Threat Snapshot include:

  • The Iranian regime gained access to $100 billion in cash from the disastrous nuclear deal and is poised for further economic relief that will fuel its global network of terror.
  • An increasing number of battle-hardened fighters from Europe are returning from jihadist training grounds. Nearly 2,000 Europeans – among an estimated 6,600 Western fighters who have traveled to Syria and Iraq – have snuck back into Europe. A French counterterrorism official recently warned, “We are moving towards a European 9/11: simultaneous attacks on the same day in several countries…We know the terrorists are working on this.”
  • Islamist terrorists are exploiting global refugee flows to infiltrate and target the West. Germany’s domestic intelligence chief recently said terrorists “have slipped in camouflaged or disguised as refugees. This is a fact that the security agencies are facing.” A suspected ISIS terror plotter arrested in Germany this week snuck into Europe posing as a refugee. The European Union also recently assessed there is a “real and imminent danger” of Syrian refugees inside Europe being radicalized and recruited by Islamist extremists.
  • ISIS and al Qaeda are expanding their sanctuaries from North Africa to South Asia. ISIS is reinforcing its foothold in Libya, where it has amassed as many as 6,500 fighters and controls coastal territory on the Mediterranean Sea. Al Qaeda is making further gains in Yemen and its key ally in Afghanistan controls more territory than it has at any point since 2001.
  • The Obama Administration has surged the release of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay despite alarming rates of recidivism. The intelligence community has assessed that 30 percent of Guantanamo detainees released are either known to have or suspected of having rejoined the fight. The potential transfer of detainees to the United States, prohibited under law, would also pose a threat to the American people.
  • The United States faces the highest Islamist terror threat environment since 9/11. ISIS is waging war here in the homeland, where there have been 21 ISIS-linked plots to launch attacks. Law enforcement authorities have arrested 81 ISIS-linked suspects, including six thus far in 2016.

TerrorThreatSnapshot_February_Social Media

The complete February Terror Threat Snapshot is available, here.

View the Committee’s interactive Terror Threat Snapshot map, here.

Obama’s Final Cyber Offense, Einstein?

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Sheesh, just the name points to a misguided failure since 2008. Einstein has a price tag, $ 5 billion. There are other questions to be asked like what does the NSA have to offer or the countless cyber security professionals in the private sector?

From the White House, there has been a 12 point plan and it has not advanced at all.

In May 2009, the President accepted the recommendations of the resulting Cyberspace Policy Review, including the selection of an Executive Branch Cybersecurity Coordinator who will have regular access to the President.

Meanwhile, hacks are real, dangerous and coming at mach speed. Using old software language such as COBOL speaks volumes as to how antiquated protections are and how dysfunctional all agencies are in maintaining crack-proof.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to be the lead agency for Einstein compliance, what could go wrong and has? The fact sheet from DHS is here.

Obama makes final push to cement cyber legacy

TheHill: President Obama on Tuesday made what is likely his last major push to bolster the government’s digital defenses before leaving office.

As part of the annual White House budget proposal, the Obama administration rolled out a sweeping plan to inject billions of extra dollars into federal cybersecurity funding, establish a new senior federal cyber official and create a presidential commission on cyber that will establish a long-term road map.

The move is likely to complete Obama’s cyber legacy, which will include an historic attention to digital security, unprecedented executive orders on the topic, and shepherding through Congress the largest-ever cyber bill, as well as numerous bruising hacks at federal agencies and allegations that government networks were woefully outdated.

In a release, the White House called the plan “the capstone of more than seven years of determined effort.”

“[Obama] is the first president that is making a big cybersecurity push and I think that’s tremendously important,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), one of Congress’s most prominent cyber voices, told The Hill.

The proposal aims to inject more than $5 billion in new funding across the government to strengthen network defenses that have been repeatedly infiltrated by suspected foreign government spies.

The ask is a 35-percent increase over last year’s allotment of $14 billion, and would put overall federal cyber spending at over $19 billion.

The budget request earmarks $3.1 billion for an “Information Technology Modernization Fund” that the White House described as a “down payment on the comprehensive overhaul” of federal IT systems.

Lieu said this fund could help solve one of the inherent budgeting problems when it comes to defending interconnected networks from hackers.

“What’s important about [the fund] is it can go across agencies and upgrade systems that touch more than one agency,” said Lieu, who sits on both the House Budget and Oversight committees.

Currently, each agency has its own individual cybersecurity budget that can be spent on its network, but that cannot necessarily be expended on portions of the agency’s IT infrastructure at other agencies.

Hackers have exploited this balkanized budgeting process.

Over the summer, suspected Chinese cyber spies cracked into the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), pilfering over 22 million people’s personal information in two separate hacks. The initial intrusion — which exposed roughly 4.2 federal workers’ personnel files — occurred at an OPM database that was housed at the Interior Department.

The OPM hacks also exposed the antiquated legacy systems the government relied on to run its networks.

Congress bashed OPM officials for not fully encrypting all their sensitive data. But the agency’s systems were simply too old to even accept modern encryption, they repeatedly explained.

The network also relied on the dated COBOL programming language, which initially became popular in the 1960s and is now eschewed by younger programmers.

A new federal official will oversee much of these update efforts.

As part of its proposal, the White House is establishing a federal chief information security officer, or CISO. The official will be housed within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and report to federal chief information officer, Tony Scott, who oversees government technology.

“This is the first time that there will be a dedicated senior official who is solely focused on developing, managing, and coordinating cybersecurity strategy, policy and operations across the entire federal domain,” the White House said.

Centralizing cybersecurity oversight is an attempt to help overcome the lack of agency-to-agency communication on the subject.

“For a while, I’ve seen the argument that there are too many lines of authority in the federal government on cybersecurity,” said Lieu. “Sometimes it’s not clear who is responsible for what.”

The CISO will also help monitor the government’s digital defense spending, which has been knocked as cost-ineffective.

Recently, a federal watchdog report concluded that the government’s main cyber defense system, known as “Einstein,” was largely ineffectual at thwarting sophisticated hackers. The report echoed long-standing criticism from security experts who say the program is a much-delayed boondoggle that is already obsolete.

Federal officials insist the system is in its final phase of implementation and will soon serve as a platform to add on leading cyber tools.

This budget infusion and new federal CISO will with these technology updates, the White House said.

The proposal also includes a robust research and public awareness component.

In a bid to build a bridge to the next administration, Obama is launching a “Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.”

The administration is directing a bipartisan group of lawmakers to appoint top industry representatives and leading technologists to the commission. The group will be tasked with taking the long view.

“The commission will make recommendations on actions that can be taken over the next decade to strengthen cybersecurity in both the public and private sectors while protecting privacy,” the White House said.

Security experts almost unanimously agree that one of these actions will be eliminating the traditional online password.

Since 2011, the White House has been trying to push people away from passwords. Tuesday’s plan includes a last bid to encourage stronger people to adopt stronger login practices.

The proposal creates a new public awareness campaign that includes leading tech firms such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

“By judiciously combining a strong password with additional factors, such as a fingerprint or a single-use code delivered in a text message, Americans can make their accounts even more secure,” the White House said.

The proposal is likely Obama’s concluding statement on cybersecurity.

During his presidency, cybersecurity has gone from a fringe issue to one that most leaders acknowledge is vital to national and economic security. The topic received an increasing amount of attention in all but Obama’s final State of the Union address.

In recent years, the U.S. has seen the dramatic rise of global cyber crime syndicates that have pillaged banks, department stores and hotels.

According to an October report from Hewlett Packard and the Ponemon Institute, cyber crime costs the average American firm $15.4 million annually, up 82 percent over the last six years. By 2019, it’s believed the cost of data breaches will reach $2.1 trillion globally.

Digital adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have also swooped in unexpectedly, plundering health insurers, airlines, nuclear plants, government agencies and, most memorably, a major movie studio.

Even terrorist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are causing fears by hijacking high-profile twitter accounts and digitally defacing websites around the world.

These trends are bound to continue after Obama leaves the White House, but this ultimate cyber thrust could help cement his reputation as the first president to actively address the digital security challenge.

“If we can get this through, the funding, I think that would be very positive for his legacy,” Lieu said. “This is not just a federal government problem, it’s endemic in the private sector.”

Was bin Ladin in the IRS Files for Obamacare?

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I remember very well saying a few years ago that any foreigner, including Usama bin Ladin could get Obamacare benefits. Never understood how true my conclusions were. Further, there was a movement in the House to impeach the IRS Commissioner. Then we learned that more hard drives have been destroyed, others were found in storage and billions in refunds went to a handful of same mail address locations in obscure places outside the United States.

Not only is Obamacare a failure itself, but it really does not become full law until 2017 and it is a law we can no longer begin to afford when the IRS cant recover bogus subsidies to illegals.

Fasten your seat belt.

Senate report: Illegal immigrants benefited from up to $750M in ObamaCare subsidies

FNC: Illegal immigrants and individuals with unclear legal status wrongly benefited from up to $750 million in ObamaCare subsidies and the government is struggling to recoup the money, according to a new Senate report obtained by Fox News.

The report, produced by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, examined Affordable Care Act tax credits meant to defray the cost of insurance premiums. It found that as of June 2015, “the Administration awarded approximately $750 million in tax credits on behalf of individuals who were later determined to be ineligible because they failed to verify their citizenship, status as a national, or legal presence.”

The review found the credits went to more than 500,000 people – who are either illegal immigrants or whose legal status was unclear due to insufficient records.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services confirmed to FoxNews.com on Monday that 471,000 customers with 2015 coverage failed to produce proper documentation on their citizenship or immigration status on time – but stressed that this does not necessarily mean they’re ineligible.

“Lack of verification does not mean an individual is ineligible for financial assistance, but only that a Marketplace did not receive sufficient information to verify eligibility in the time period outlined in the law,” CMS spokesman Aaron Albright said.

The Senate report also accused the administration of lacking a solid plan to get that money back – and predicted that in the end, the IRS will be “unable to fully recoup the funds.”

“The information provided to the Committee by the IRS and HHS reveals a troubling lack of coordination between the two agencies … and demonstrates that the IRS and HHS neglected to consider how they would recover these wasteful payments,” the report says.

Under the law, the feds can dole out these payments on a temporary basis if a recipient’s legal status is unclear, but are supposed to cut off funding and coverage if the recipient does not later come up with the paperwork. Up to a half-million “ineligible” people, according to the report, applied in this way — with their credits paid in advance to the insurers. The IRS, though, is supposed to get overpayments back from the individuals themselves.

The Senate report, based on a review launched by committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., derisively describes this approach as “pay and chase.”

In other words, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pays credits and subsidies to the insurance companies on behalf of the applicants – and the feds then “chase” after any overpayments to ineligible people once they are discovered.

“This ‘pay and chase’ model has potentially cost taxpayers approximately $750 million,” the report says. The 500,000 individuals in question have been removed from coverage, according to the findings, as the government seeks to get the money back.

The Senate report says the IRS and HHS initially failed to coordinate on a plan for recouping funds, and claimed that a subsequent plan from the IRS to recoup the money is still “ineffective and insufficient.”

In a July letter to Johnson, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen assured that the agency is “committed to identifying and efficiently addressing” improper payments. He reiterated that anyone “not lawfully present” who enrolls for ObamaCare coverage “must repay” the advance premium credit payments, and would be breaking the law if they don’t.

Watch Out America, Venezuela a Failed State

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Venezuela Is About to Go Bust

Nagel/ForeignPolicy: Venezuela’s economy is facing a tsunami of bad news. The country is suffering from the world’s deepest recession, highest inflation rate, and highest credit risk — all problems aggravated by plunging oil prices. Despite all its troubles, though, until now Venezuela has kept making payments on its $100-billion-plus foreign debt.

That is about to end. In recent days a consensus has emerged among market analysts:

Venezuela will have to default. The only question is when.

Venezuela will have to default. The only question is when.

A Venezuela meltdown could rock financial markets, and people around the world will lose a lot of money. But we should all save our collective sympathy — both the government in Caracas and the investors who enabled it had it coming.

In the last few years, the Venezuelan government has been steadfast about staying in good graces with its lenders. It has paid arrears on its debt religiously, and has constantly asserted that it will continue paying.

But it has neglected to implement the reforms Venezuela would need to improve the fundamentals of its economy. Its commitment to socialist “populism” and the complicated internal dynamics within the governing coalition have paralyzed the government. It has repeatedly postponed important reforms like eliminating its absurd exchange rate controls (the country has at least four exchange rates) or raising the domestic price of gasoline (the cheapest in the world by far). Instead, the government has “adjusted” by shutting off imports, leaving store shelves all over the country barren.

This strategy now seems unsustainable. According to various estimates, in 2015 Venezuela imported about $32 billion worth of goods. This was a marked drop from the previous year. This year, given current oil prices and dwindling foreign reserves, if Venezuela were to pay off its obligations — at least $10 billion — and maintain government spending, it would have to import close to nothing. In a country that imports most of what it consumes, this would ensure mayhem. That is why all analysts predict default in the coming months.

The Economist has joined the chorus, saying that “the government has run out of dollars.” In the words of Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann, this will be “the largest and messiest emerging market sovereign default since the Argentine crisis of 2001.”

One of the reasons the coming default will be so messy is the many instruments involved, all issued under widely varying conditions. Part of the stock of debt was issued by PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which owns significant assets overseas (For example, Citgo is 100 percent owned by the Venezuelan government). Another part of the debt was issued by the national government directly, while another big chunk is owed to China, under secretive terms.

The Chinese issue looms large. China’s loans to Venezuela — close to about $18 billion, according to Barclay’s – consist of short-term financing payable via oil shipments. As the price of oil collapses, Venezuela needs to ship more oil to China in order to pay them back. Barclay’s estimates that right now this is close to 800,000 barrels per day, leaving little more than a million barrels per day Venezuela can sell for cash.

A default will send ripples beyond Wall Street. Many people have been buying high-risk, high-return Venezuelan debt for years — from pension funds in far-off countries to small banks in developing ones. Most stand to lose their shirts. Yet the signs that this was unsustainable were there for all to see.

For years, Venezuela has had a massive budget deficit, sustained only by exorbitant oil prices. For years, analysts have been warning that the Venezuelan government would rather chew nails that allow the private sector to grow. And yes, a lot of that borrowed money was used to help establish a narco-military kleptocracy.

It is impossible to untangle the ethical implications of all of this. Lending Venezuela money is what business ethics professors talk about when they question “winning at someone else’s expense.” Losing money from investing in Venezuela is akin to losing it from, say, funding a company that engages in morally reprehensible acts. (Insert the name of your favorite evil corporate villain here).

Investors in companies with “tainted profits” from, say, engaging in child labor or violating human rights should not get the world’s sympathy, nor should they be bailed out. Similarly, investors in Venezuelan debt have only their hubris to blame.

In a few months, once the rubble of the Bolivarian revolution is cleared, the discussion will turn to how Venezuela can be helped. It would be smart to remember that aid should come to the Venezuelan people first. As the scarcity of food and medicine grows,

Venezuela may become the first petro-state to face a humanitarian disaster.

Venezuela may become the first petro-state to face a humanitarian disaster.

If and when a responsible government in Caracas asks for foreign assistance, solving this urgent issue should be at the top of the agenda. Conditions on financial assistance should privilege the interests of Venezuelans caught in the debacle above the interests of angry hedge fun managers or international bankers.

In other words, the Venezuelan people should come first. The folks who enabled this catastrophe? They can wait.

 

The DoJ Hacked, DHS Files Compromised

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Hackers leaked DHS staff records, 200GB of files are in their hands

A hacker accessed an employee’s email account at the Department of Justice and stole 200GB of files including records of 9,000 DHS staffers and 20,000 FBI employees.

SecurityAffairs: Yesterday, the data related a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff directory were leaked online, a Twitter account shared the link to an archive containing 9,355 names.

The responsible for the data leakage first contacted Motherboard to share the precious archive.

Each record of the DHS Staff Directory includes name, title, email address, and phone number.

Going deep in the archive it is possible to note that it includes information of DHS security specialists, program analysts, InfoSec and IT and also 100 employees with a title “Intelligence”.

The same Twitter account has announced later the imminent release of an additional data dump containing 20,000 FBI employees.

DHS firewall

Are the records authentic?

Motherboard that obtained the archive reached the operations center of the FBI, and in one case the individual who pick up the phone presented himself with the same name associated with that number in the archive. A similar circumstance occurred with a DHS employee, Motherboard so confirmed that the information is legit.

Which is the source of data?

According to Motherboard, a hacker accessed an employee’s email account at the Department of Justice. As proof, the hacker sent the email message to Motherboard’s contributor Joseph Cox directly from the compromised account.

“A hacker, who wishes to remain anonymous, plans to dump the apparent names, job titles, email addresses and phone numbers of over 20,000 supposed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees, as well as over 9,000 alleged Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees, Motherboard has learned.” wrote Cox in a blog post.

“The hacker also claims to have downloaded hundreds of gigabytes of data from a Department of Justice (DOJ) computer, although that data has not been published.”

The hacker first tried to use the compromised credentials to access a DOJ staff portal, but without success, then he called the department directly and obtained the access through social engineering techniques.

The hacker accessed the DoJ intranet where the database is hosted, then he downloaded around the, out of 1TB that he had access to.

“I HAD access to it, I couldn’t take all of the 1TB,” the hacker told to MotherBoard.

The hackers confirmed his intention to release the rest of the data in the near future.Which is the motivation behind the attack?

It is not clear at the moment why the hacker released the archive, surely it’s not financially motivated. The hacker only left the following message when has leaked the data-

“This is for Palestine, Ramallah, West Bank, Gaza, This is for the child that is searching for an answer…” which are the verses of “Long Live Palestine”

The only certainty right now is that similar incidents are becoming too frequent, apparently the government staff is not properly trained on the main cyber threats or the hacking technique. Similar incidents show the lack of knowledge on the most basic security measures.
Whenever a hacker leaks so sensitive data, I think the number of his peers who had access to the same information with the intent to use them in other attacks or resell them, perhaps to a foreign government.

Pierluigi Paganini

*** As a reminder, in 2014 a much more dangerous hack intrusion happened at the DHS:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alerted critical infrastructure operators to recent breaches within the sector – including the hack of a U.S. public utility that was vulnerable to brute-force attacks.

This week, the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT), a subgroup of DHS, revealed information about the incidents in a newsletter (PDF).

According to ICS-CERT, industrial control systems were compromised in two, new incidents: one, involving the hack of an unnamed public utility, and another scenario where a control system server was remotely accessed by a “sophisticated threat actor.”

After investigating the public utility hack, ICS-CERT found that the system’s authentication mechanism was susceptible to brute-force attacks – where saboteurs routinely run through a list of passwords or characters to gain access to targeted systems. The control system used a simple password mechanism, the newsletter revealed.

In