Further Reading, Other Developments, and Coming Events (14 December)

Further Reading

• “Russian Hackers Broke Into Federal Agencies, U.S. Officials Suspect” By David Sanger — The New York Times.; “Russian government hackers are behind a broad espionage campaign that has compromised U.S. agencies, including Treasury and Commerce” By Ellen Nakashima and Craig Timberg — The Washington Post; “Suspected Russian hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails – sources” By Chris Bing — Reuters. Apparently, Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii (SVR), the Russian Federation’s Foreign Intelligence Service, has exploited a vulnerability in SolarWinds’ update system used by many United States (U.S.) government systems, Fortune 500 companies, and the U.S.’ top ten largest telecommunications companies. Reportedly, APT29 (aka Cozy Bear) has had free reign in the email systems of the Departments of the Treasury and Commerce among other possible victims. The hackers may have also accessed a range of other entities around the world using the same SolarWind system. Moreover, these penetrations may be related to the recently announced theft of hacking tools a private firm, FireEye, used to test clients’ systems.
• “Hackers steal Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine data in Europe, companies say” By Jack Stubbs — Reuters. The European Union’s (EU) agency that oversees and approve medications has been hacked, and documents related to one of the new COVID-19 vaccines may have been stolen. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) was apparently penetrated, and materials related to Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine were exfiltrated. The scope of the theft is not yet known, but this is the latest in many attempts to hack into the entities conducting research on the virus and potential vaccines.
• “The AI Girlfriend Seducing China’s Lonely Men” By Zhang Wanqing — Sixth Tone. A chat bot powered by artificial intelligence that some men in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are using extensively raises all sorts of ethical and privacy issues. Lonely people have turned to this AI technology and have confided their deepest feelings, which are stored by the company. It seems like a matter of time until these data are mined for commercial value or hacked. Also, the chatbot has run afoul of PRC’s censorship policies. Finally, is this a preview of the world to come, much like the 2013 film, Her, in which humans have relationships with AI beings?
• “YouTube will now remove videos disputing Joe Biden’s election victory” By Makena Kelly — The Verge. The Google subsidiary announced that because the safe harbor deadline has been reached and a sufficient number of states have certified President-elect Joe Biden, the platform will begin taking down misleading election videos. This change in policy may have come about, in part, because of pressure from Democrats in Congress about what they see as Google’s lackluster efforts to find and remove lies, misinformation, and disinformation about the 2020 election.
• “Lots of people are gunning for Google. Meet the man who might have the best shot.” By Emily Birnbaum — Protocol. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser may be uniquely qualified to lead state attorneys general on a second antitrust and anti-competition action against Google given his background as a law professor steeped in antitrust and his background in the Department of Justice and White House during the Obama Administration.

Other Developments

• Cybersecurity firm, FireEye, revealed it was “attacked by a highly sophisticated threat actor, one whose discipline, operational security, and techniques lead us to believe it was a state-sponsored attack” according to CEO Kevin Mandia. This hacking may be related to vast penetration of United States (U.S.) government systems revealed over the weekend. Mandia stated FireEye has “found that the attacker targeted and accessed certain Red Team assessment tools that we use to test our customers’ security…[that] mimic the behavior of many cyber threat actors and enable FireEye to provide essential diagnostic security services to our customers.” Mandia claimed none of these tools were zero-day exploits. FireEye is “proactively releasing methods and means to detect the use of our stolen Red Team tools…[and] out of an abundance of caution, we have developed more than 300 countermeasures for our customers, and the community at large, to use in order to minimize the potential impact of the theft of these tools.”
  • Mandia added:
    • Consistent with a nation-state cyber-espionage effort, the attacker primarily sought information related to certain government customers. While the attacker was able to access some of our internal systems, at this point in our investigation, we have seen no evidence that the attacker exfiltrated data from our primary systems that store customer information from our incident response or consulting engagements, or the metadata collected by our products in our dynamic threat intelligence systems. If we discover that customer information was taken, we will contact them directly.
    • Based on my 25 years in cyber security and responding to incidents, I’ve concluded we are witnessing an attack by a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities. This attack is different from the tens of thousands of incidents we have responded to throughout the years. The attackers tailored their world-class capabilities specifically to target and attack FireEye. They are highly trained in operational security and executed with discipline and focus. They operated clandestinely, using methods that counter security tools and forensic examination. They used a novel combination of techniques not witnessed by us or our partners in the past.
    • We are actively investigating in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other key partners, including Microsoft. Their initial analysis supports our conclusion that this was the work of a highly sophisticated state-sponsored attacker utilizing novel techniques.    
• The United States’ (U.S.) Department of Justice filed suit against Facebook for “tactics that discriminated against U.S. workers and routinely preferred temporary visa holders (including H-1B visa holders) for jobs in connection with the permanent labor certification (PERM) process.” The DOJ is asking for injunction to stop Facebook from engaging in the alleged conduct, civil penalties, and damages for workers harmed by this conduct.
  • The DOJ contended:
    • The department’s lawsuit alleges that beginning no later than Jan. 1, 2018 and lasting until at least Sept. 18, 2019, Facebook employed tactics that discriminated against U.S. workers and routinely preferred temporary visa holders (including H-1B visa holders) for jobs in connection with the PERM process. Rather than conducting a genuine search for qualified and available U.S. workers for permanent positions sought by these temporary visa holders, Facebook reserved the positions for temporary visa holders because of their immigration status, according to the complaint. The complaint also alleges that Facebook sought to channel jobs to temporary visa holders at the expense of U.S. workers by failing to advertise those vacancies on its careers website, requiring applicants to apply by physical mail only, and refusing to consider any U.S. workers who applied for those positions. In contrast, Facebook’s usual hiring process relies on recruitment methods designed to encourage applications by advertising positions on its careers website, accepting electronic applications, and not pre-selecting candidates to be hired based on a candidate’s immigration status, according to the lawsuit.
    • In its investigation, the department determined that Facebook’s ineffective recruitment methods dissuaded U.S. workers from applying to its PERM positions. The department concluded that, during the relevant period, Facebook received zero or one U.S. worker applicants for 99.7 percent of its PERM positions, while comparable positions at Facebook that were advertised on its careers website during a similar time period typically attracted 100 or more applicants each. These U.S. workers were denied an opportunity to be considered for the jobs Facebook sought to channel to temporary visa holders, according to the lawsuit. 
    • Not only do Facebook’s alleged practices discriminate against U.S. workers, they have adverse consequences on temporary visa holders by creating an employment relationship that is not on equal terms. An employer that engages in the practices alleged in the lawsuit against Facebook can expect more temporary visa holders to apply for positions and increased retention post-hire. Such temporary visa holders often have limited job mobility and thus are likely to remain with their company until they can adjust status, which for some can be decades.
    • The United States’ complaint seeks civil penalties, back pay on behalf of U.S. workers denied employment at Facebook due to the alleged discrimination in favor of temporary visa holders, and other relief to ensure Facebook stops the alleged violations in the future. According to the lawsuit, and based on the department’s nearly two-year investigation, Facebook’s discrimination against U.S. workers was intentional, widespread, and in violation of a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(1), that the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division enforces. 
• A trio of consumer authority regulators took the lead in coming into agreement with Apple to add “a new section to each app’s product page in its App Store, containing key information about the data the app collects and an accessible summary of the most important information from the privacy policy.” The United Kingdom’s UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets and the Norwegian Consumer Authority led the effort that “ongoing work from the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN), involving 27 of its consumer authority members across the world.” The three agencies explained:
  • Consumer protection authorities, including the CMA, became concerned that people were not being given clear information on how their personal data would be used before choosing an app, including on whether the app developer would share their personal data with a third party. Without this information, consumers are unable to compare and choose apps based on how they use personal data.
• Australia’s Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) has released a Cyber Operational Resilience Intelligence-led Exercises (CORIE) framework “to test and demonstrate the cyber maturity and resilience of institutions within the Australian financial services industry.”

Coming Events

• On 15 December, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Intellectual Property Subcommittee will hold a hearing titled “The Role of Private Agreements and Existing Technology in Curbing Online Piracy” with these witnesses:
  • Panel I
    • Ms. Ruth Vitale, Chief Executive Officer, CreativeFuture
    • Mr. Probir Mehta, Head of Global Intellectual Property and Trade Policy, Facebook, Inc.
    • Mr. Mitch Glazier, Chairman and CEO, Recording Industry Association of America
    • Mr. Joshua Lamel, Executive Director, Re:Create
  • Panel II
    • Ms. Katherine Oyama, Global Director of Business Public Policy, YouTube
    • Mr. Keith Kupferschmid, Chief Executive Officer, Copyright Alliance
    • Mr. Noah Becker, President and Co-Founder, AdRev
    • Mr. Dean S. Marks, Executive Director and Legal Counsel, Coalition for Online Accountability
• The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Cybersecurity Subcommittee will hold a closed briefing on Department of Defense Cyber Operations on 15 December with these witnesses:
  • Mr. Thomas C. Wingfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
  • Mr. Jeffrey R. Jones, Vice Director, Command, Control, Communications and Computers/Cyber, Joint Staff, J-6
  • Ms. Katherine E. Arrington, Chief Information Security Officer for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
  • Rear Admiral Jeffrey Czerewko, United States Navy, Deputy Director, Global Operations, J39, J3, Joint Staff
• The Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee’s Economic Policy Subcommittee will conduct a hearing titled “US-China: Winning the Economic Competition, Part II” on 16 December with these witnesses:
  • The Honorable Will Hurd, Member, United States House of Representatives;
  • Derek Scissors, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute;
  • Melanie M. Hart, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Director for China Policy, Center for American Progress; and
  • Roy Houseman, Legislative Director, United Steelworkers (USW).
• On 17 December the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM) Task Force will convene for a virtual event, “Partnership in Action: Driving Supply Chain Security.”

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