PRESS RELEASE
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Senator Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., known as for the Protection Division’s prime watchdog to analyze the Pentagon’s failure to safe its communications from international spies, following the devastating “Salt Hurricane” hack of main telecom firms by Chinese language authorities hackers.
In a letter to Division of Protection Inspector Common Robert Storch, Wyden and Schmitt highlighted the DOD’s failure to safe its communications from international spies. The senators revealed that DOD knowledgeable Congress that it signed a serious contract this yr, value as much as $2.7 billion, for wi-fi telephone providers for U.S. navy personnel, regardless that DOD knew that the telephone firms’ networks have been weak to international surveillance.
Final month, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company confirmed hackers working for the Chinese language authorities breached a number of telecommunications firms and focused name data for President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Vance and Senate Majority Chief Schumer, amongst different high-profile targets.
“DOD’s failure to safe its unclassified voice, video, and textual content communications with end-to-end encryption expertise has left it needlessly weak to international espionage. Furthermore, though DOD is among the many largest consumers of wi-fi phone service in america, it has failed to make use of its buying energy to require cyber defenses and accountability from wi-fi carriers,” Wyden and Schmitt wrote. “We urge you to analyze DOD’s failure to safe its communications, and to advocate the adjustments in coverage mandatory to guard DOD communications from international adversaries.”
Wyden and Schmitt revealed a number of regarding new particulars about DOD’s incapability and unwillingness to guard troopers and civilian staff who depend on wi-fi telephone networks, of their letter at the moment:
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DOD has requested copies of impartial, third-party cybersecurity audits telephone carriers commissioned for his or her networks, however the carriers refused to provide these audits, citing attorney-client privilege, in accordance with DOD.
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DOD remains to be evaluating whether or not it has authority conduct its personal cybersecurity audits of carriers that serve the Pentagon.
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In August, DOD claimed that unencrypted telephone traces didn’t pose an pointless danger and declined to undertake a coverage banning use of unencrypted telephone traces by DOD personnel.
Learn the total letter right here.