Oct 10, 2018 04:33 PM
FBI chief says threats from drones to U.S. 'steadily escalating'
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-d...SKCN1MK22J
EXCERPT: FBI director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday that the threat from drones “is steadily escalating” even as Congress gives agencies new tools to address threats. Wray told the Senate Homeland Security committee that the FBI assesses that “given their retail availability, lack of verified identification requirement to procure, general ease of use, and prior use overseas, (drones) will be used to facilitate an attack in the United States against a vulnerable target, such as a mass gathering.”
Wray made his comments days after President Donald Trump signed into law legislation that gives the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI new powers to disable or destroy drones that pose a threat to government facilities. The new law also requires DHS to conduct several assessments to evaluate emerging threats that drones may pose to state or private critical infrastructure entities and domestic airports.Wray said the risk has “only increased in light of the publicity associated with the apparent attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Maduro using explosives-laden” drones.
Wray noted the FBI had disrupted a plan in the United States to use drones to attack the Pentagon and the Capitol building. In 2012, Rezwan Ferdaus was sentenced to 17 years in prison for attempting to conduct a terrorist attack. Ferdaus, who held a degree in physics, obtained multiple jet-powered, remote-controlled model aircraft capable of flying 100 miles per hour and planned to fill the aircraft with explosives and crash them into the Pentagon and the Capitol using a GPS system in each aircraft....
MORE: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-d...SKCN1MK22J
Driverless cars could become WMDs
https://www.weeklystandard.com/zach-aysa...ecome-wmds
EXCERPT: Autonomous vehicles are giant security risk and the white hats need to get there before the black hats do. Eight months ago I published my concerns about how autonomous vehicles could be weaponized at scale via cyber-attack. (For those who missed it, here’s the gist: Due to the all-or-nothing nature of certain classes of cyber-attack, self-driving cars and other autonomous systems can be utilized by hostile actors to create a coordinated mass attack.) It’s time for an update.
At a closed-door Q&A session at the software hacking conference DEF CON, Elon Musk said that a fleetwide attack was Tesla’s “nightmare scenario” and announced that they were going to open-source their security modules so that automakers could work together to secure a safe self-driving future. [...]
At an offensive cybersecurity conference earlier this year, former GCHQ information security specialist, Matt Tait, presented the keynote. [...] One of Tait’s concluding remarks was that there are now numerous strategic threats to the world from a mass cyber-attack. [...]
Which brings us to the present. Bruce Schneier is the most well-known cybersecurity professional in the world, and for decades, he’s been regarded as an even-keeled, sober, and nuanced thinker. This September, he released a new book titled "Click Here to Kill Everybody". In it Schneier covers the all-or-nothing danger of certain classes of cyber-attack and specifically mentions the risk of mass cyber-attack on computerized automotives.
So the bad news is that the hazard from a successful, single-system cyber-attack is now catastrophic. But the good news is that people are now starting to pay attention....
MORE: https://www.weeklystandard.com/zach-aysa...ecome-wmds
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-d...SKCN1MK22J
EXCERPT: FBI director Christopher Wray told a U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday that the threat from drones “is steadily escalating” even as Congress gives agencies new tools to address threats. Wray told the Senate Homeland Security committee that the FBI assesses that “given their retail availability, lack of verified identification requirement to procure, general ease of use, and prior use overseas, (drones) will be used to facilitate an attack in the United States against a vulnerable target, such as a mass gathering.”
Wray made his comments days after President Donald Trump signed into law legislation that gives the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI new powers to disable or destroy drones that pose a threat to government facilities. The new law also requires DHS to conduct several assessments to evaluate emerging threats that drones may pose to state or private critical infrastructure entities and domestic airports.Wray said the risk has “only increased in light of the publicity associated with the apparent attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Maduro using explosives-laden” drones.
Wray noted the FBI had disrupted a plan in the United States to use drones to attack the Pentagon and the Capitol building. In 2012, Rezwan Ferdaus was sentenced to 17 years in prison for attempting to conduct a terrorist attack. Ferdaus, who held a degree in physics, obtained multiple jet-powered, remote-controlled model aircraft capable of flying 100 miles per hour and planned to fill the aircraft with explosives and crash them into the Pentagon and the Capitol using a GPS system in each aircraft....
MORE: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-d...SKCN1MK22J
Driverless cars could become WMDs
https://www.weeklystandard.com/zach-aysa...ecome-wmds
EXCERPT: Autonomous vehicles are giant security risk and the white hats need to get there before the black hats do. Eight months ago I published my concerns about how autonomous vehicles could be weaponized at scale via cyber-attack. (For those who missed it, here’s the gist: Due to the all-or-nothing nature of certain classes of cyber-attack, self-driving cars and other autonomous systems can be utilized by hostile actors to create a coordinated mass attack.) It’s time for an update.
At a closed-door Q&A session at the software hacking conference DEF CON, Elon Musk said that a fleetwide attack was Tesla’s “nightmare scenario” and announced that they were going to open-source their security modules so that automakers could work together to secure a safe self-driving future. [...]
At an offensive cybersecurity conference earlier this year, former GCHQ information security specialist, Matt Tait, presented the keynote. [...] One of Tait’s concluding remarks was that there are now numerous strategic threats to the world from a mass cyber-attack. [...]
Which brings us to the present. Bruce Schneier is the most well-known cybersecurity professional in the world, and for decades, he’s been regarded as an even-keeled, sober, and nuanced thinker. This September, he released a new book titled "Click Here to Kill Everybody". In it Schneier covers the all-or-nothing danger of certain classes of cyber-attack and specifically mentions the risk of mass cyber-attack on computerized automotives.
So the bad news is that the hazard from a successful, single-system cyber-attack is now catastrophic. But the good news is that people are now starting to pay attention....
MORE: https://www.weeklystandard.com/zach-aysa...ecome-wmds