CyberWars - June 2015 | Was FBI operational data hacked? - Google Search | Report: Chinese Hackers Got Into FBI Personnel Files: "Then again, maybe it was Russia – pretending to be China." | Obama Ignores Red Line Amid Chinese Cyberattack - Investor's Business Daily - ‎16 hours ago: "Cyberwar: The damage done by Chinese hackers grows worse by the day, with news that they stole a treasure trove of blackmail-worthy material on those with high security clearances. What's Obama's reaction?" | NSA Chief: Don’t Assume China Hacked OPM | Cyber Commander: OPM Hack Highlights Data Theft Danger: "Adm. Mike Rogers, who is also director of the National Security Agency, declined to name China as the main culprit in the attacks but would not reveal who the intelligence agencies believe conducted the intelligence-gathering operation. Asked after a speech on what basis Cyber Command is linking the OPM hack to China, Rogers said: “I’m not going to accept the assumption” that China played a role in the cyber attacks. “First of all I’m not going to get into the specifics of attribution,” the four-star admiral said at a conference in Washington called GEOINT 2015. “That’s a process that we’re working through on the policy side. That’s ongoing.”"

June 27, 2015

National Security Agency director Mike Rogers speaks at Stanford University, Monday, Nov. 3, 2014.

NSA Chief: Don’t Assume China Hacked OPM

Obama Ignores Red Line Amid Chinese...
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:34 AM

Google News

Obama Ignores Red Line Amid Chinese Cyberattack

Investor's Business Daily - ‎16 hours ago‎

Cyberwar: The damage done by Chinese hackers grows worse by the day, with news that they stole a treasure trove of blackmail-worthy material on those with high security clearances. What's Obama's reaction? When the Office of Personnel Management ...

Keep Calm and Spy On: Why the OPM Hack Won't Bring Down US Intelligence

Defense One - ‎Jun 26, 2015‎

For starters, there are very few known cases in which blackmail was involved in getting government employees to give up classified information. China; /; Intelligence. NSA Chief: Don't Assume China Hacked OPM · Why the US Hasn't Pinned the OPM Hack ...

The OPM Hack: Weighing the Damage to US Intelligence

Council on Foreign Relations (blog) - ‎Jun 26, 2015‎

I finally got my letter from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). What a relief. I was worried my credibility as a commentator would be damaged if my data wasn't stolen. Imagine how Dan Rather would have felt had he not received Anthrax. In any case ...

How to find the best cyber security insurance for your firm

Yahoo Finance UK - ‎Jun 26, 2015‎

(Reuters) - A robust cyber security insurance policy can be tricky to procure, even for the most meticulous wealth management firms. Interest in cyber insurance has surged over the past year following a number of high-profile hackings, including one ...

Cyber-attacks: threats, regulatory reaction and practical proactive measures to ...

Lexology (registration) - ‎Jun 26, 2015‎

In the past few months, the White House, Home Depot, JP Morgan, Hard Rock Hotels, Tesla, the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue Service and many other institutions have suffered well-publicized cybersecurity breaches.[1] In fact, very recently ...

US-China cybersecurity talks should focus more on trade secret theft than ...

The Conversation US - ‎Jun 26, 2015‎

Peter K Yu does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. The Conversation is funded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Howard ...

Study: Government Cybersecurity Lax

Sci-Tech Today - ‎Jun 26, 2015‎

The federal government has for years failed to take basic steps to protect its data from hackers and thieves, putting at risk everything from nuclear secrets to the private tax information of hundreds of millions of Americans, records show. In the latest example, ...

Director of the NSA stops by GRU

WRDW-TV - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW) - The Director of the National Security Agency stopped by Georgia Regents University today to talk to students about cyber security classes. Local high schools are adding their first classes this fall, and GRU is creating a Cyber ...

JED BABBIN: The high cost of cyber-espionage

Washington Times - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

On June 4, the media reported that for the second time in a year, the Office of Personnel Management's computer network was the target of a successful penetration by the People's Republic of China. It now appears that OPM was aware of the ...

NSA director visits GRU cyber-campers for graduation

WTOC - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

AUGUSTA, GA (WFXG) - A group of local students got the chance to dig deep into the cyber world during a week-long summer camp at Georgia Regents University. Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency opened with this question: ...

OVERNIGHT CYBERSECURITY: US official nearly blames China for OPM hack

The Hill - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

Welcome to OVERNIGHT CYBERSECURITY, your daily rundown of the biggest news in the world of hacking and data privacy. We're here to connect the dots as leaders in government, policy and industry wrap their arms around cyberthreats. What lies ahead ...

Excerpts from recent North Dakota editorials

<a href="http://Bakken.com" rel="nofollow">Bakken.com</a> (press release) - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

No wonder it took government officials so long to admit the gravity of a computer security breach a few weeks ago. It may be the most significant intelligence failure of all time. Though hackers gained access to personal information about hundreds of ...

Lawmakers unimpressed with OPM's cyber action report

Federal Times - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

The Office of Personnel Management released a "Cybersecurity Action Report" June 24 detailing the actions taken to shore up network security since the agency's systems were hacked, though legislators aren't satisfied with the efforts to-date. The document ...

Feds Slow to Confront China about Cyberattacks

Government Technology - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

While the U.S. side is sure to raise concerns over hacking of the Office of Personnel Management, few analysts think anything of substance will be announced this week. by Stuart Leavenworth, McClatchy Foreign Staff / June 25, 2015. (TNS) — For nearly a ...

Reports: NSA Chief Michael Rogers Declines to Attribute OPM Hack

ExecutiveGov - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

Adm. Michael Rogers, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, has declined to identify the perpetrator of the recent data breach at the Office of Personnel Management, Breaking Defense reported Wednesday. Colin Clark writes that ...

NSA Not Yet Pointing Finger at China as Suspect in OPM Data Theft (UPDATED)

National Defense Magazine (blog) - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

The National Security Agency is not yet saying whether China was to blame for the massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management that resulted in the theft of millions of government worker records, according to its director. Director of the NSA and ...

Burnin' Down the House

Huffington Post - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can prevent wildfires." Now, that wildfire is the OPM breach. Yesterday it was the IRS. The day before that, it was Snowden. Tomorrow, it'll spark up somewhere else. Federal cyber pros are sounding the alarm. They are ...

Cyber Commander: OPM Hack Highlights Data Theft Danger

Washington Free Beacon - ‎Jun 25, 2015‎

The massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management that compromised personal records of tens of millions of federal workers highlights the danger of cyber attacks, the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command said Wednesday. Adm. Mike Rogers ...

U.S. government is vunerable to hacks, 100K tax accounts taken

Crain's New York Business - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

The latest hack by suspected Chinese cyberspies is considered to be one of the worst breaches in U.S. history. By Associated Press. Comments Email Print. ×. Photo: Bloomberg News. The number of government cyberincidents has grown significantly within ...

NSA's Rogers Won't Say China Did OPM Hack

Breaking Defense - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

“So what really makes you think that, as the head of NSA and Cyber Com, I'm going to talk with you about this,” he told a reporter here today. Breaking D readers can rely on the expert analysis done for us by John Quigg in his recent op-ed on the subject, but ...

Obama Administration Bent Rules to Avoid Disclosing Full Extent of OPM Attack

Breitbart News - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

Obama administration officials avoided immediately disclosing the severity of the government employee data hack by defining it as two distinct breaches, according to people familiar with the matter, in an incident that underscores the tensions within the ...

NSA Chief: Don't Assume China Hacked OPM

Defense One - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

Attribution, which came so quickly when North Korea hacked Sony, is proving trickier when China stands accused. China; /; Cyber; /; Intelligence. Why the US Hasn't Pinned the OPM Hack on China · 5 Chinese Cyber Attacks That Might Be Even Worse Than ...

Hack May Have Hit 18 Million Social Security IDs

Nasdaq - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration for more than a week avoided disclosing the severity of an intrusion into federal computers by defining it as two breaches but divulging just one, said people familiar with the matter. That approach has frustrated ...

NSA Confident in Ability to Attribute Massive Government Data Breach

Sputnik International - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

According to NSA Chief and head of US Cyber Command Admiral Mike Rogers, US National Security Agency has a high degree of certainty that the intelligence community will be able to find out who are the perpetrators of the massive hack against the Office ...

US Should Establish Systemic Response to Cyber Threats - NSA Director

Sputnik International - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

The United States should broaden its policies of responding to individual cases of cyber theft and cyber attacks, US National Security Agency (NSA) director and head of US Cybercommand Michael Rogers said on Wednesday. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) ...

Investigators are closer to knowing how many people's security clearance ...

Washington Post (blog) - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

The Office of Personnel Management plans to arrive at an estimate by Friday of the number of people whose highly sensitive security clearance information was in a system breached by Chinese hackers. As a third congressional hearing on the massive ...

Worst US cyber intrusion: Data of 18 million fed employees exposed

ChristianToday - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

An illustration picture shows a projection of binary code on a man holding a laptop computer. Security experts point at China as the culprit in the worst ever cyber intrusion in the US. The personal data of an estimated 18 million current and past US federal ...

IRS employees can use 'password' as a password? No wonder we get hacked

The Guardian - ‎Jun 24, 2015‎

Why should anyone trust what the US government says on cybersecurity when they can't secure the systems they have full control over? data. Encryption won't protect you if the government is lax with your data Photograph: Mal Langsdon/Reuters. Contact ...

Law Firms Can Learn from Government Data Breaches

Bloomberg Big Law Business - ‎Jun 23, 2015‎

Editor's Note: The author of this post is a consultant on legal, regulatory and policy issues related to cyber security. By Joseph Abrenio, Vice President of Advisory Services and General Counsel, Delta Risk. Earlier this year, the United States government ...

IRS-OPM teamwork and a China cyber warning

<a href="http://FCW.com" rel="nofollow">FCW.com</a> - ‎Jun 23, 2015‎

Sen. Mark Warner has asked the IRS to help the Office of Personnel Management deal with the fallout of its massive breaches that exposed millions of current, former and retired federal workers' personal data. "[F]iling and claiming a false [tax] return is ...

Read the whole story

· · · · · · · · ·

Cyber Commander: OPM Hack Highlights Data Theft Danger
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:32 AM

Washington Free Beacon

OPM Director Katherine Archuleta / AP

BY: Bill Gertz

Adm. Mike Rogers, who is also director of the National Security Agency, declined to name China as the main culprit in the attacks but would not reveal who the intelligence agencies believe conducted the intelligence-gathering operation.

Asked after a speech on what basis Cyber Command is linking the OPM hack to China, Rogers said: “I’m not going to accept the assumption” that China played a role in the cyber attacks.

“First of all I’m not going to get into the specifics of attribution,” the four-star admiral said at a conference in Washington called GEOINT 2015. “That’s a process that we’re working through on the policy side. That’s ongoing.”

Other U.S. intelligence officials have said intelligence agencies have moderate confidence that China carried out the attacks. The evidence is said to include technical forensic information based on the malicious software used by the hackers, the sophistication of the data exfiltration operations, and the Internet domains that were used to store information taken from OPM networks.

However, Rogers said the OPM hack is typical of the growing danger of cyber attacks data theft in the current global environment.

“I think the important thing for us to take away from OPM is that it is another reminder to us—and I don’t care if it’s the government or the private sector—we are in a world in which increasingly data has value as a commodity to a wide range of people,” Rogers said.

“And there’s a wide range of people and groups and nations states out there aggressively attempting to gin access to that data, whether it resides in the U.S. government, whether it resides the private sector, whether it resides in our own homes as private citizens and individuals.”

Rogers said he believes “we’re in for a period of time, much like we’re seeing now, we’re in a constant fight to safeguard our networks, to safeguard our data.”

Damage from the OPM attack appears to be increasing.

On Capitol Hill Wednesday, OPM Director Karen Archuleta revealed that as many as 18 million Social Security numbers contained in a database on federal security clearance holders appear to have been compromised. She declined to comment when asked if the total number of federal workers who were victimized in the OPM hack could be as many as 32 million.

OPM’s official estimate of the total number is that 4.2 million current and former federal workers were victims of the cyber attacks that was discovered in April and appears to have been carried out since at least December.

So far, two OPM databases were breached, a central personal network and a separate security clearance database used to check the backgrounds of federal employees involved in classified work. That database involves millions of people who are questioned about security clearance renewals or new clearances.

Rogers also was asked what he will recommend to the president in terms of a response to the OPM hacking. He declined to discuss internal deliberations on the matter.

Rogers suggested the current U.S. policy of taking mainly defensive steps to block computer attacks may not be working to solve the problem.

A long-term approach to the problem of cyber attacks will require changing the current approach of solely responding to individual attacks, he said.

“Quite frankly just continually responding to individual incidents, I don’t think in the long run is going to get us to where we need to be,” Rogers said.

Rogers did not say what approach he favors. However, in congressional testimony earlier this year he urged a more proactive strategy of conducting some offensive counter attacks as a way to deter cyber attackers.

On the general question of identifying the origin or cyber attacks, called attribution, Rogers said “attribution has sure come a long way and is not the challenge it was 10 years ago.”

The cyber attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment in November was quickly identified as coming from North Korean government hackers, he said.

The solid intelligence from NSA, FBI, and DHS allowed senior U.S. political leaders to have “high confidence” that Pyongyang conducted the attacks that stole sensitive company information and damaged the companies computers. The administration responded with imposing sanctions on North Korea.

“Every incident is different,” he said, noting that tracking down hackers is “a bit of a cat and mouse game.”

“As you generate and gain more insights on what actors are doing, you watch them try to change what they do in a way to obfuscate how they do it,” he said.

For example, hackers have formed new partnerships with other hackers in an effort to thwart intelligence agencies from identifying them, sometimes with success, he said.

“But in general, I remain pretty confident in our ability to generate insights into who’s doing what,” Rogers said.

President Obama met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong and other Chinese officials at the White House and raised U.S. concerns about cyber issues, according to a White House statement.

Earlier this week, State Department officials would not say whether China’s role in the OPM hacking was raised during this week’s meetings of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the Chinese.

The president and his advisers are keeping secret the intelligence linking China to the cyber attacks to avoid upsetting relations with Beijing, according to a U.S. intelligence official.

Forensic technical details of the OPM hacking, including an access malware called Sakula, have been linked to Chinese state-run hackers in the past. The malware gives remote users broad access to closed computer networks.

A second U.S. official with access to details of the investigation of the OPM hack said there is clear technical evidence linking the cyber attacks to China’s military.

China’s military has a special unit for foreign cyber attacks that is under the Third Department of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff known as 3PLA.

Lisa Monaco, the White House homeland security director, said on Friday that among the options being considered for a future response to the OPM hack are sanctions and unspecified legal, diplomatic, and intelligence actions.

Read the whole story

· · · · · ·

NSA Chief: Don’t Assume China Hacked OPM
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:29 AM

Defense One - All Content

The U.S. military’s top cyber warrior says it’s merely an “assumption” that the Chinese government was behind the recent hack at the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM — and not necessarily one he shares. That puts Adm. Michael Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, in opposition to unnamed sources within the U.S. government who blamed Beijing in June 4 interviews with the New York Times and Washington Post.

Rogers spoke in response to a question about how the National Security Agency was going about attributing the breach to the Chinese government. “You’ve put an assumption in your question,” he said. “I’m not going to get into the specifics of attribution. It’s a process that’s ongoing.”

The OPM hack may have exposed as many as 18 million records of government employees and job applicants, including people who applied for—and received—top-secret clearances.

Rogers’s hedged response, given during a question-and-answer session at the GEOINT symposium in downtown Washington, comes in stark contrast to the NSA’s approach to attribution during the Sony hack. In that case the FBI, working with the NSA and DHS, quickly named North Korea as the perpetrator, resulting in the prompt issuance of sanctions.

Rogers called that a great example of cross-agency collaboration. “Working across the United States government, DHS, FBI and the National Security agency, we were able to relatively quickly come to consensus about the characterization of the activity we were seeing coming in, which formed the basis of our attribution, and with a relatively high confidence factor, which allowed us to respond in a very public and direct way.”

Why hasn’t that collaboration worked in the case of the OPM hack? Said Rogers: “every dataset is different.”

If you’re a conservative politician or a presidential candidate, there’s a good chance that you believe that the Chinese government is behind the OPM hack and that the Obama administration is being too easy on Beijing. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, toldthe Associated Press on June 5 that Beijing backed the intrusion. She called it “yet another indication of a foreign power probing successfully and focusing on what appears to be data that would identify people with security clearances.”

More recently, former Arkansas governor and 2016 GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee wrote on his blog, “We should hack the cell phones of some prominent Communist party leaders, hack the bank accounts of intelligence officials, publicly humiliate Chinese families for political corruption, or wipe-out a few critical Chinese computer systems.”

The Obama administration has been more reluctant to publicly blame the Chinese government. “I can’t promise you that we’ll be in a position at any point in the future to make a grand pronouncement about who may have been responsible for this particular intrusion,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at a June 9 briefing.

The cybersecurity group FireEye says it’s “highly confident” that Chinese hackers did it, based on the kind of cables and telecommunications equipment involved, the type of data stolen, and the specific backdoors that the thieves used. “These backdoors, they’re commonly used by Chinese threat actors,” Michael Oppenheim, the intelligence operations manager at FireEye, told Defense One.

Oppenheim stopped short of formally accusing the Chinese government but added, “We believe that this aligns with Chinese interests.”

Oppenheim said that he was sympathetic to Rogers’s reluctance to formally attribute the breach to the Chinese government. “For someone in his position, you want to be 100-percent sure,” he said.

Meanwhile, we asked Rogers: what is he doing to shore up defenses or retaliate for the hack? “Now tell me,” he said, “you really think that as the director of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, I’m going to talk to you about that?”

Read the whole story

· · ·

was fbi operational data hacked? - Google Search
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:25 AM

Story image for was fbi operational data hacked? from Business Insider

Those Chinese hackers got into FBI files too

Business Insider-Jun 25, 2015

Hackers who infiltrated the Office of Personnel Management and stole ... two decades' experience in the US Special Operations Command, told ...

Officials Masked Severity Of Hack
Wall Street Journal-Jun 24, 2015

Up to 18 Million Social Security Numbers Possibly Taken in OPM Hack
Nasdaq-Jun 24, 2015

UPDATE - FBI, OPM differ on number of Americans affected by hack
VideoNewsUs-Jun 24, 2015

Hack of US data may have hit 18 million social security numbers
In-Depth-The Australian-Jun 24, 2015

Report: Chinese Hackers Got Into FBI Personnel Files
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:20 AM

Comments On: Report: Chinese Hackers Got Into FBI Personnel Files

One of those implications is that the FBI is responsible for investigating all the other data breaches, and protecting America against terrorism and espionage. As always, the breach was hushed up, and its full extent is still either unknown or being kept from the public, including potential primary and secondary identity theft victims. (When personnel files are raided, the friends and family of the targets have reason to be nervous that they might be the next targets.)

In this case, some degree of secrecy might have been defensible given the extreme sensitivity of FBI operations, but it’s weird that we’re suddenly hearing about it now, as a staggered release of bad news while public attention is elsewhere, thanks to a “veteran agent” speaking anonymously to Newsweek.

Said agent is having a very bad year, because he said he was also a victim of the Anthem Blue Cross hack in February. In May, he received a letter from the Office of Personnel Management that China’s data pirates had gotten into his personnel file.

When Newsweek asked this agent if he thought the entire 36,000-strong FBI workforce had been compromised, his answer was not encouraging, and it lent support to the contention that Chinese cyber-spies were essentially handed user names and passwords by the Administration: “I don’t think so…. but it’s pretty ugly. I guess [OPM staff] outsourced some of their software to a Chinese company. Unfortunately I don’t think anyone’s going to be fired like they should be.”

The agent concluded by warning that a large-scale penetration of the FBI could have “mind-boggling” implications for counter-intelligence and national security.

In the interests of fairness, Newsweek quotes a cyber security writer who thinks the damage to the FBI might be exaggerated by reading too much into the testimony of a single agent, which is a fair point.

Actually, the writer in question, Steve Ragan of CSO Online, went further and suggested Newsweek was essentially sensationalizing an existing story by reporting the news as an additional data breach or previously unsuspected extension of the OPM breach, because the FBI agent who spoke to Newsweek, and anyone else at the Bureau who might have been raided, were really just part of the ever-growing number of victims from the original hack – 4 million, 12 million, 18 million, you have to watch the congressional hearings on C-SPAN every day to keep track of what it’s up to. In other words, it’s not so much that “the FBI got hacked” as that “the entire U.S. government got hacked.”

That’s not exactly a comforting thought. Ragan goes way overboard in trying to under-sensationalize the story, putting an astonishing degree of faith in the idea that Chinese hackers can’t be responsible because the Obama Administration hasn’t formally accused China of perpetrating the assault: “For all we know, it was someone in Iceland using a really, really slow 3G connection. Then again, maybe it was Russia – pretending to be China. Perhaps it was an army of squirrels.”

But the situation is messy enough that some precision about which systems have been compromised, to the extent possible given how little reliable information we’ve been given by this secretive, inept, spin-obsessed Administration. “FBI employees were compromised by the OPM breach” is a very different story than “Chinese hackers broke into the FBI’s computer system, too,” but at the end of the day, if a large number of FBI personnel files were stolen, we’re still looking at a very big problem.

Is it plausible that the agent who spoke to Newsweek is the only FBI employee whose files were compromised? That seems like even more of a stretch than extrapolating from his account that everyone who works for the agency was hit. All 36,000 of them being affected is far more plausible than just one individual, especially as the scope of the breach keeps growing, and OPM testimony makes it clear just how completely the Administration was outmaneuvered by this army of squirrels, for a very long span of time.

Read the whole story

· · ·

Boehner doles out new punishment
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:04 AM

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his allies are charging ahead with their effort to punish conservatives who have been a thorn in leadership’s side — a purge that is roiling the GOP conference.

The latest victim is Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, who could be stripped of his title as GOP freshman class president on Thursday morning.

Boehner allies have been retaliating against rank-and-file members who voted against a procedural motion earlier this month, nearly derailing a major trade package favored by Republican leaders that is set to clear the House

on Thursday

While the Speaker has lashed out at conservative rebels before, the latest intraparty purge has been particularly aggressive, this time targeting members of the new, conservative House Freedom Caucus who voted against the rule.

Three members of that caucus have been booted from the whip team, and another was stripped of his subcommittee gavel. Buck, meanwhile, faces being ousted as head of the freshman class just months after being elected to that position by his peers.

“It’s clear that leadership has decided there’s going to be retaliation,” he told reporters in the Speaker’s lobby just off the House floor.

But GOP lawmakers and aides close to leadership contend the political payback is being divvied out at the behest of the Republican Conference.

Roughly 200 Republicans believe the retaliation is completely appropriate, they say, and many have reportedly been privately imploring Boehner’s team to take more aggressive actions like stripping the rebels of gavels, denying them travel, halting campaign cash and blocking their bills from the floor.

“The fact is we’ve got more than 200 rank-and-file members who are royally pissed off at those guys for voting to turn the House floor over to Nancy Pelosi,” said a senior GOP leadership aide. “There’s plenty of anger to go around, but the large majority of it is from members who believe much more punishment should be doled out.”

The deep fissures in the party were apparent during Wednesday’s closed-door conference meeting in the Capitol, where Boehner announced he fully supported Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz’s (R-Utah) decision to sack one of his subcommittee chairmen, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a Freedom Caucus co-founder.

“We are in the majority. Part of being in the majority is advancing an agenda — a conservative agenda,” Boehner said, according to a source in the meeting. “You may not agree with every part of the agenda, and when you don’t, you can vote your conscience. But voting against rules is not a vote of conscience; it is a vote to hand the House floor over to Nancy Pelosi.”

Boehner’s remarks sparked a debate in the room. Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) defended colleagues who voted against the rule, saying it was poorly structured and “convoluted.” But two other Republicans close to leadership, Reps. John Kline (Minn.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), said Chaffetz was right to take action against Meadows.

“Committee chairs have to be able to manage their committee,” Kline, the Education Committee chairman, told The Hill. “I hope we don’t need to do that again, but I certainly support that decision, because he’s got to make that committee work.”

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), who along with Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) was kicked off the whip team in the trade vote melee, typically has harsh words for leadership. This time, he took direct aim at Chaffetz.

“Jason Chaffetz has hurt himself far more than he hurt Mark Meadows,” Franks told The Hill.

Votes on the procedural motions, known as “rules,” are viewed as a referendum on the majority party’s strategy of bringing legislation to the floor. Opposing a rule is interpreted as public rejection of the leadership, which is why the votes are considered tests of party unity.

Centrist Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said enforcing leadership’s rule over committee and whip team assignments is an effective way to instill party discipline.

“When you’re elected to serve in the majority it’s a great honor and privilege. And with that honor comes a governing responsibility. And by taking down rules and empowering, in this case Nancy Pelosi, you’re really undermining the majority,” Dent said.

“Look, if you vote against the rule, you know you’ve got to get off the whip team. It’s that simple,” he added. “Nobody should be surprised or upset about that.”

Dent shared his own experience of deciding to vote against a rule while serving on the whip team as Congress hurtled toward a government shutdown in 2013. He disagreed with the leadership’s strategy of refusing to bring a bill to the floor that didn’t defund ObamaCare.

But he gave the leadership a heads-up about his vote against the rule before voluntarily resigning from the whip team. Dent, who is now the House Ethics Committee chairman, did not hold any gavels at the time.

“I did it with my eyes wide open understanding the consequences,” Dent said.

The move against Meadows wasn’t just about his rule vote. In February, he had stopped paying dues to the House GOP’s campaign arm. More importantly, Meadows apparently had given Boehner and Chaffetz his word he would back Boehner for Speaker before getting his gavel last year, said GOP aides familiar with the conversations; when the vote was held in January, Meadows reneged and cast his vote for Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.).

Meadows denied ever promising to vote for Boehner as Speaker.

“No one asked me about the Speaker’s vote, including Chairman Chaffetz, as a condition of anything,” Meadows told The Hill. “It’s a bold-faced lie.”

The latest round of retribution has encouraged other Republicans to speak out. In an interview, Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) accused Boehner of removing him from a spring congressional delegation to attend the Summit of the Americas in Panama. Yoho was one of three Republicans who had challenged Boehner in the Speaker’s race.

The response from a leadership aide: “Taxpayer-funded travel is a privilege and not a right.”

More Freedom Caucus lawmakers could be next on the hit list. Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), one of the caucus’s founding members, chairs a subcommittee on the powerful House Financial Services panel. Jordan holds a subcommittee gavel on the House Oversight Committee. And Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) leads a Natural Resources subcommittee.

Buck told reporters a freshman colleague approached him on Tuesday night and gave him a choice: Resign or get ousted by his peers. When Buck refused to step down, his colleague issued a threat: “Well, then we’re going to call a meeting.”

Later that evening, the chief of staff to Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), the freshman liaison to leadership, sent out an email asking for freshman members to gather at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

In a brief interview, Walters declined to disclose exactly what the meeting would be about. But in a statement, she said, “a majority of the freshman class has expressed concerns I share regarding the leadership of our class president.”

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) joked that he’s “still got the record for being kicked off two committees.” House GOP leaders removed him from the Budget and Agriculture panels in 2012 as payback for repeatedly bucking the party line.

He accused the GOP leadership of having misplaced priorities.

“Leaders unite, they don’t divide. That’s been the Republican concern about President Barack Obama, that he’s a divider. And we have our leadership doing the same thing,” he said.

Read the whole story

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Next Page of Stories

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Hackers got FBI files as part of OPM breach
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 10:53 AM

Suspected Chinese hackers breached FBI agents’ personnel files as part of the broader attack on the federal government that has laid bare millions of people’s data, Newsweek reported.

Putting FBI agents' data at risk could have national security implications; many investigate domestic terrorist plots and foreign spies.

It’s still unclear exactly whose information has been pilfered following a massive digital siege on the Office of Personnel Management.

Initially, the OPM said a hack had exposed 4.2 million current and former executive branch employees.

A week later, the personnel agency revealed a second breach of a security clearance database that contained the background check files of millions of military and intelligence community. The FBI is part of the intelligence community.

A widely reported estimate that 18 million people were affected by the second intrusion was disputedby OPM Director Katherine Archuleta on Thursday, who said that number could rise even higher.

It’s not clear whether the reported FBI infiltration was part of the first or second breach. As an intelligence community agency, it would make sense it was part of the larger hack.

But an unnamed FBI source told Newsweek the OPM notified him in May that his personnel file had been compromised, which was before the agency had started sending notices about the second breach.

The FBI has more than 35,000 employees.

The ramifications of those employees’ info getting out could be “mind boggling,” the source toldNewsweek, “because there are counterintelligence implications, national security implications.”

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Carter: NATO must bolster cyberdefense

» US, eyeing Russia, urges NATO allies to harden cyber defenses - Reuters
24/06/15 13:49 from Cyber Warfare - Google News
Reuters US, eyeing Russia, urges NATO allies to harden cyber defenses Reuters A major cyber attack on a NATO member by any adversary could trigger a collective response by the alliance, perhaps extending beyond cyberspace .

» U.S. Scolds China for Online Attacks
24/06/15 00:00 from NYT > Cyberwarfare
The fact that top officials of the two nations are talking, at a two-day meeting in Washington, is seen as positive at a time when they seem fa

U.S., eyeing Russia, urges NATO allies to harden cyber defenses
Saturday June 27th, 2015 at 11:51 AM

World | Wed Jun 24, 2015 1:49pm EDT

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (C) and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter (R) chat after a family photo, following a meeting of the North Atlantic Council (NAC) in Defense Ministers session at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium June 24, 2015. NATO defence...

Reuters/Eric Vidal

BRUSSELS U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter urged NATO allies on Wednesday to strengthen their cyber defenses, a senior U.S. defense official said, citing an advanced threat from Russia.

Cyber vulnerabilities within NATO have come into focus following Russia's annexation of Crimea last year, which raised concerns about unconventional warfare techniques that can range from use of unidentified troops to information campaigns.

A major cyber attack on a NATO member by any adversary could trigger a collective response by the alliance, perhaps extending beyond cyberspace.

"In his message today, (Carter) underscored the importance of cyber defense – both of NATO networks and critical infrastructure," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that many NATO members were vulnerable.

Carter said ensuring a strong cyber defense was more important than developing offensive capabilities, according to the official.

ESTONIAN EXPERIENCE

The United States in April disclosed a cyber intrusion this year by Russian hackers it said had accessed an unclassified U.S. military network. The Pentagon's new cyber strategy document singles out Russian cyber actors for their stealth.

Carter, during a trip to Estonia, announced on Tuesday a new U.S. initiative meant to bolster NATO members' defenses. The effort would be coordinated through an Estonia-based, NATO-accredited cyber center and would include planning to better protect critical infrastructure. [ID:nL3N0Z93XL]

Estonia, which borders Russia, is acutely aware of the cyber challenge. When the ex-Soviet Baltic state fell victim to a cyber attack in 2007 and blamed Moscow, the Kremlin responded that it could not always control patriotic Russian hackers.

"You absolutely should look at what the secretary announced through the lens of trying to deter Russia and bolster the resilience of NATO partner nations. The Russians are very good at cyber," the defense official said.

Carter's plan involves bolstering the role of NATO's Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Estonia and working with it to help allies develop cyber defense strategies.

"We want to have the center of excellence become less academic and less like a think-tank and more active and involved in doing real things," the official said, noting past efforts in the Gulf and east Asia.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart)

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