Archive for the ‘NSA’ Category

Buhari is not ready to leave office as failure -NSA – Internatinal Centre For Investigative Reporting

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari is not ready to leave office as a failure and will change the nations security narratives before the end of his tenure in 2023, according to the NationalSecurity Adviser Babagana Monguno

Monguno, who briefed State Houses correspondents shortly after the president met with the service chiefs, said although the military had recorded successes in the ongoing war against insurgency in the North-East, the president was determined to achieve a turnaround in the fortunes of the country.

He said the nation had not recorded the level of success being reported at the moment where insurgents were giving up arms to embrace peace, attributing the situation to the relentless efforts of the armed forces, intelligence and security agencies.

This is very, very evident. Weve never had such large numbers of people defecting from the other side, back to the Nigerian side, mainly, as a result of many issues within the theatre, issues of infighting among the various factions of the terrorist groups.

He noted that there had been seamless intelligence gathering and sharing among the nations security operatives and Nigerias neighbours within the Lake Chad region.

So the president was briefed, the president is quite happy that theres been a tremendous success, especially with the advent of the new service chiefs and inspector-general of police.

And hes also made it very, very clear that hes not ready to exit government as a failure. He is not going to tolerate that hes made changes and is ready to make further changes if he is not satisfied. He is completely determined to ensure that theres a turnaround in the fortunes in the theatre of operations.

While claiming that the security atmosphere was improving despite recent killings and kidnappings in the North-West and North-East, Monguno admitted that a lot still needed to be done.

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Monguno added that Buhari was not oblivious to the sufferings of Nigerians as he was working with the vice-president to address the issues of hunger in the country.

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Buhari is not ready to leave office as failure -NSA - Internatinal Centre For Investigative Reporting

Full NSA Sullivan Interview: Kabul Evacuation Is Very Risky and Dangerous – The Global Herald – The Global Herald

NBC News published this video item, entitled Full NSA Sullivan Interview: Kabul Evacuation Is Very Risky and Dangerous below is their description.

National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan talks about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, during an interview with Meet the Press. Subscribe to NBC News: http://nbcnews.to/SubscribeToNBC

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Full NSA Sullivan Interview: Kabul Evacuation Is Very Risky and Dangerous

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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south; Iran to the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north; and China to the northeast.

Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is around 32 million, composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks.

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Full NSA Sullivan Interview: Kabul Evacuation Is Very Risky and Dangerous - The Global Herald - The Global Herald

Rubio takes an interest in the right’s NSA conspiracy theory – MSNBC

It was in late June when Fox News' Tucker Carlson claimed on the air that the National Security Agency was "monitoring" his electronic communications, as part of a scheme to take his show "off the air." The host offered no proof, but several congressional Republicans rallied behind him -- with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) even asking Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calf.) to launch some kind of probe into the odd allegations.

Weeks later, the GOP's willingness to take the matter seriously hasn't gone away.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee is calling on the director of national intelligence to investigate allegations that the federal government "unmasked" Fox News host Tucker Carlson. In a letter to Avril Haines, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that recent media reports that "Mr. Carlson was unmasked by a government agency" have "only fueled the perception that unmasking is being used as a political hammer or to satisfy curiosity."

In his written request to the DNI, the Republican senator not only referenced the "perception" of political improprieties, Rubio also argued that the public is "attuned to the perception of widespread misconduct." His letter also referenced "public suspicion and distrust."

Or put another way, the Florida Republican -- the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the panel's former chairman -- isn't aware of any wrongdoing on the part of the intelligence community, but he is aware of "perceptions."

Of course, those perceptions may very well exist, though that doesn't make them true.

Let's circle back to our earlier coverage to review how we arrived at this point. NBC News reported last month that after Carlson raised the allegations, the NSA took the unusual step of issuing a written statement, explaining that the Fox News personality "has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air. NSA has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States."

NBC News' report added, "The conservative host has a history of making false or exaggerated claims."

It was against this backdrop that Axios moved the ball forward with a related report, adding that Carlson was "talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him."

Axios added that U.S. officials "learned about Carlson's efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach and that's the basis of his extraordinary accusation."

If Axios' sources were correct, it raised the possibility of a scenario in which the Fox News host may have been in communication with a Kremlin official who was under surveillance. Under such a scenario, the NSA wasn't monitoring Carlson's communications; it was monitoring the communications of the person Carlson was talking to.

If you connected with a member of Vladimir Putin's team, the NSA would probably be aware of that, too. It would not, however, be proof of an NSA plot to derail your professional career.

It also wouldn't warrant a congressional investigation or weird partisan conspiracy theories.

All of this was reminiscent of Donald Trump's insistence that U.S. intelligence agencies "spied on" his 2016 campaign. When pressed for proof, Republicans have pointed to instances in which members of Team Trump were in communication with their Russian allies.

But again, this wasn't because anyone was spying on the Trump campaign, it was because U.S. intelligence agencies were spying on Russians -- whom Team Trump was chatting with before taking office four years ago.

If the reporting is correct, and something similar happened to Carlson, it wouldn't be shocking in the slightest.

So why is Marco Rubio taking an interest in this weeks later? It's possible that the senator, given his powerful position on the Intelligence Committee, has uncovered relevant information that sparked new interest in the story.

And it's also possible that the ambitious Republican is playing a partisan political game, so that he can tell his party's base and conservative media outlets that he played along with their suspicions, indifferent to whether those ideas are rooted in fact.

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Rubio takes an interest in the right's NSA conspiracy theory - MSNBC

Tucker Carlson vs. the NSA | Cato at Liberty Blog – Cato Institute

  1. Tucker Carlson vs. the NSA | Cato at Liberty Blog  Cato Institute
  2. Tucker Carlson reignites NSA surveillance debate on the Right  Yahoo News
  3. The NSA Is Spying on Tucker Carlson  theTrumpet.com
  4. Tucker Carlson Reportedly 'Furious' Fox Not Backing Up His 'NSA Spied On Me' BS  NewsHounds
  5. House Republicans send letter to NSA demanding information on Tucker Carlson spying claims  Just The News
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Tucker Carlson vs. the NSA | Cato at Liberty Blog - Cato Institute

Former NSA director: U.S. needs a new approach to ransomware response – Healthcare IT News

The United States, along with much of the world, finds itself battling two pandemics: the COVID-19 crisis, of course, but also the cyber pandemic that has also proliferated across the globe.

In the healthcare industry, some hospitals have been hobbled for weeks at a time and at least one patient has died because of the scourge of ransomware.

The cyberattacks have become so frequent and commonplace that it's worth asking whether ransomware, like many suspect is already happening with SARS-CoV-2, is already moving from pandemic to endemic status.

"Ransomware, I think, has become the greatest challenge for most organizations," said retired Admiral Michael Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency and the former commander of U.S. Cyber Command in a recent interview with Healthcare IT News.

"Healthcare [is] an incredibly attractive target in the middle of a pandemic," said Rogers, who will be speaking next month at HIMSS21 in Las Vegas. "And criminals are aware. That's one reason why you've seen a massive uptick, particularly focused on healthcare in the past 18 months from a ransomware activity perspective."

Indeed, since the early days of the pandemic not counting the vanishingly small window when the prospect of a hacker "ceasefire" was dangled the bad guys have been hard at work, targeting the World Health Organization and COVID-19 testing sites, academic research facilities and vaccine distribution supply chains.

Their targets have also included hospitals and health systems of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, the size of the ransom demands is climbing skyward.

"It's gotten worse," said Rogers, who served under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Rogers served at NSA and U.S. Cyber Command concurrently for four years before retiring in 2018.

"For a couple of reasons. Number one, the criminal segment has become much more aggressive," he said. "Why? There's a lot of money. There's a lot of money for criminal groups to be made. I may not want to pay the ransom, but I can't afford interruption or degradation of my services or operating ability to help in the middle of a pandemic. I've got to keep going."

Number two? "In the last three years since I left, nation states' risk calculus has become even more aggressive. They are willing to take even greater risks."

That's not just with ransomware. Recent headlines have shown just how far foreign cyber crooks have been willing and able to intrude upon U.S.-based information networks not just the DNC and the RNC, or Sony, but a wide array of federal agencies and private companies large and small.

Rogers points specifically to the SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange server exploits, which stunned even seasoned cybersecurity professionals in their sheer size, scope and brazenness.

Meanwhile, ransomware seizures such as the Colonial Pipeline hack have helped bring the threat into sharp focus.

Finally, the president and Congress are paying attention, and federal security agencies seem willing to give as good as they get.

"On the positive side, there is clearly a sense that we are not where we need to be,and that it's going in the wrong direction," said Rogers.

But he says he is frustrated that the cybersecurity problems are not only persisting, but worsening.

A big reason for that is the current state of incident prevention and response especially when it comes to interrelation of the public and private sectors "has failed to deliver for over a decade," said Rogers. "I only speak for myself. But my frustration is: Why do we keep doing the same things and expect a different result?"

Sure, there are valuable organizations such as H-ISAC, the Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which specializes in "crowdsourced" cybersecurity, sharing threat intelligence and other best practices for protection and risk mitigation. And yes, the CISA, FBI, HHS and other agencies are good about getting out alerts and warnings to the healthcare stakeholders that need to hear them.

But too often, "the government will do its thing, the private sector will do its thing," said Rogers. "As we see things we think might be of interest to the other, as we have the time, and as we have the inclination, we'll share those insights.

"Everyone is so busy, quite frankly. Most organizations don't have time to think about it. They are just trying to defend their own systems, their own intellectual property, their own data."

To truly measure up against the scope of the cyber threatto healthcare and all industries, "I just think we've got to have a different model," he said.

"It's not about collaboration," Rogers explained. "To me, it's about integration. We've got the government and the private sector. We've got to team together 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

He acknowledged, "You can't do this at scale across every business within the private sector. But can't we start with a few sectors where the risks to our economy, to the safety and wellbeing of our citizens, to the security of our nation?Let's pick a few areas,and do some test cases, and see if a different model might produce a different result."

There are some "great examples out there where we have applied a government and private-sector model and achieved some amazing results," said Rogers.

For instance,he said, "We decided as a society that the potential loss of literally hundreds of people in an aviation accident represented such a risk that we needed to do something different," he said.

"So we created mechanisms: Every time there is an aviation accident, the federal government steps in. It partners with the airplane manufacturer, the airline that operated the aircraft, the union, et cetera. It pores over all the maintenance records. It pores over the production history of the aircraft. It looks at all the software and the hardware. It looks at how it was operated. It determines the cause of the crash.

"And then it goes a step further," he added. "It mandates that we're going to change maintenance. Sometimes we're going to change production. We're going to change the way we do software, we're going to change how the aircraft is operating.

"The net impact is we are flying more aircraftwith more people than we ever have, and yet aviation safety has actually been very strong. While we have aviation accidents, they tend not to be recurring patterns, the same cause over and over."

Compare that with cybersecurity, where we've been seeing the same techniques used by the bad guys "working over and over and over," he said.

"We have got to get to a point where the pain of one leads to the benefit of the many," said Rogers. "And yet what is happening now? The pain of the one is not shared. We don't learn from it. And so it is repeated over and over and over again. We have got to change that dynamic."

Admiral Michael S. Rogers will offer more insights at HIMSS21 as a participant in the keynote panel discussion, Healthcare Cybersecurity Resilience in the Face of Adversity. Its scheduled for Tuesday, August 10 from 8:30-9:30 a.m. in Venetian, Palazzo Ballroom.

Twitter:@MikeMiliardHITNEmail the writer:mike.miliard@himssmedia.comHealthcare IT News is a HIMSS publication.

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Former NSA director: U.S. needs a new approach to ransomware response - Healthcare IT News