Overnight Cybersecurity: FBI takes heat after Clinton probe

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 try to counter the rise in cyber threats. What lies ahead for Congress, the administration and the latest company under siege? Whether you’re a consumer, a techie or a D.C. lifer, we’re here to give you …

THE BIG STORIES:

–GOP TAKES ON FBI: Republicans are demanding answers from the Justice Department over the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server.

GOP lawmakers expressed outrage on Wednesday and are pushing a number of efforts to get more answers on the handling of the Clinton probe.

{mosads}House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is calling FBI honcho James Comey to testify on Thursday of this week about the Clinton affair. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.) is calling for the public release of Clinton’s three-and-a-half-hour testimony with Comey.

The House Judiciary Committee is also slated to hear testimony from Attorney General Loretta Lynch over her recent airport meeting with Bill Clinton next week. Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said Wednesday that the FBI’s decision not to recommend charges against Clinton “raises serious questions” and is “uniquely troubling in light of Attorney General Lynch’s secret meeting with former President Bill Clinton.”

Click here for more on Lynch testifying, here for more on Comey testifying and here for McConnell’s calls for Clinton’s FBI interview to be made public.

–FOCUS ON COMEY: “As associate attorney and as Jim Comey’s boss for two or three years, I was very disappointed in him,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Fox News. He was not the only disappointed Republican.

But Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), a Trump supporter, said anger at Comey is misplaced. It should be focused, he said, at Lynch. “I think we have to separate the FBI from the Department of Justice. Director Comey did an extraordinary job,” Collins said.

Further bucking party lines was GOP commentator David Gergen, an adviser to four U.S. presidents and a senior political analyst for CNN, who called Comey’s work on the Clinton case “the FBI’s finest hour.” The only people upset with the decision, he said, were “embittered partisans.:”

To read our full pieces, click here for Giuliani’s reaction, here for Collins’s reaction and here for David Gergen.

–CLINTON TO KEEP GETTING CLASSIFIED BRIEFINGS: Hillary Clinton will continue to receive classified intelligence briefings, despite the misgivings of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Obama spokesman Josh Earnest referred to the “longstanding tradition” of giving the briefings to major party candidates.

“We should leave those decisions in the hands of our intelligence professionals and not risk them being sullied by the political debate,” he said.

To read our full piece, click here.

–GRASSLEY’S QUESTIONS FOR COMEY: Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also wrote a strongly worded letter to Comey asking why some of Clinton’s actions didn’t rise to the level of “gross negligence.” He included a series of questions about why repeated warnings to Clinton that her email arrangement was unsecure went unheeded.

“As part of the investigation, did the FBI review the classified cybersecurity briefing Diplomatic Security arranged for Secretary Clinton and her staff in 2011, the Boswell Memorandum regarding cybersecurity threats relating to the use of Blackberries, and the other relevant security warnings given to Secretary Clinton and her staff on these issues?  If not, why not?  Did you evaluate whether such repeated warnings to Secretary Clinton about specific cyber threats and the use of non-government email, along with her subsequent and continuing refusal to comply with those multiple warnings and instructions, constituted gross negligence?  If not, why not?” the letter asked.

To read the letter, click here.

A LIGHTER CLICK:

–IT’S NOT PERFECT, BUT MAN DO I NOT MISS COMMUTING: Self-steering toward Gomorrah with this comic on robot car ethics.

A REPORT IN FOCUS:

–ANONYMITY NOT ALWAYS BRINGING OUT THE BEST IN PEOPLE. The internet anonymity service Tor has some bad actors among its volunteer servers set to hack dark net websites.  

Northeastern University professor Guevara Noubir and his graduate student Amirali Sanatinia found the many of the volunteer-run servers making up the Tor network are instead designed to hack the anonymous sites that connect to it.

More than 95 percent of Tor traffic is used to browse websites such as Facebook and Twitter, and the anonymity it provides allows citizens of oppressive regimes visit sites that would otherwise be tracked, lets abuse victims use the internet without revealing their location and helps privacy-minded individuals feel more secure. The Department of State, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the governments of Germany and Sweden have all funded Tor for such reasons.

But the other 5 percent of traffic on Tor goes to hidden sites that are not accessible from normal web browsers. Hidden sites enjoy the same anonymity as Tor browsers and can range from news outlets in countries not supportive of an open press to criminal enterprises, including child pornography, drug sales and hackers for hire.

Noubir and Sanatinia found more than 100 of the network’s “exit nodes” were designed to not only store data but to contact the server again to either scan it for vulnerabilities or attack it.  

It is unclear who operates the corrupt exit nodes. It could be hackers looking for victims, governments looking to quash activists or law enforcement looking to crack down on criminal markets. The FBI, for example, recently hacked a wide assortment of computers using Tor to break up a child pornography ring.

To read the rest of our piece, click here.

WHO’S IN THE SPOTLIGHT: 

–NASA. Their Kepler Telescope Twitter account was just hacked.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Links from our blog, The Hill, and around the Web.

The IRS is launching a cyber-information campaign for tax preparers. (The Hill)

Android will start blocking ransomware from locking you out of your phone. (The Hill)

The New Jersey congressional delegation wants better Homeland Security support for cybersecurity in the Garden State’s port system.

Multiple civil liberties groups object to uniform state student privacy legislation they believe opens the door for invasions of privacy. (EFF)

A University of Maryland team designed a robot to follow you around and blast you with air conditioning. (Washington Post)

A privacy advocate is asking for the president to nominate a new member to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. (EPIC)

New maps show what the dark web looks like. Hint: It looks like cabbage. (Motherboard)

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