As cyber connectivity increases, foreign actors have been able to exploit vulnerabilities on smartphones, computers, and the digital infrastructure that supports them to undermine democracies. Probing and penetrating computer networks and connected systems allows malign actors to surreptitiously steal, alter, and collect data, damaging citizens’ privacy and disrupting organizational and institutional processes in democracies. Find ASD’s work on cybersecurity on this page.
Interference Matters
Answering the Call: Improving Local Police Response to Ransomware
Q&A with Maurice Turner: How Can Democracies Fight Back Against Ransomware?
Ransomware payments in the United States reached nearly $600 million in the first six months of 2021, exceeding the amount of ransom that U.S. institutions reportedly paid to cybercriminals during all of 2020. In 2021, the United States has fallen v [...]
Maurice Turner on NPR: How America Can Reliably Resist Ransomware
The Biden Administration is attempting to curtail an uptick in ransomware attacks on American businesses. Just last week, an Iowa grain co-operative was hit by a cyberattack by hacking group BlackMatter demanding $5.9 million dollars. In June, the [...]
Policymakers Shouldn’t Wait for a “Cyber 9/11” or “Digital Pearl Harbor” to Act on Long-Term Cyber Strategies
Digital attacks on critical infrastructure are occurring at a pace that is overwhelming defenders, yet not alarming the public enough to push for greater accountability in the defense of hospitals, schools, and energy distributors. For over a decade [...]
Maurice Turner in WSJ: Ransomware Payments Should Not Be Made Illegal
Making ransomware payments illegal would eliminate one of the few options that victims have to recover their data and get back to work quickly. Time is money. Sometimes paying a ransom is less expensive than withholding one—and being forced to labor [...]
Maurice Turner Gives Insight into Biden’s Cybersecurity Meeting with Private Sector on CBS News
President Biden is calling on the private sector to help bolster U.S. cybersecurity. He hosted leaders in tech, finance, education and infrastructure for a summit at the White House Wednesday. Maurice Turner, a cybersecurity fellow for the Alliance [...]
How Authoritarians Can Exploit Apple’s Child Safety Initiatives
Much has been said about Apple’s recently announced “Child Safety” initiatives. The focus has been (rightly so) on the perceptions of user privacy and implications of content processing happening on user devices versus cloud servers. Child safety pr [...]
Maurice Turner Explains Why Hacking Voters Is Easier Than Hacking Ballots at Def Con
Vulnerabilities in U.S. election infrastructure not only expose the nation’s elections to hybrid physical and network attacks, but its voters to influence campaigns designed to cast doubt in the process itself. Authoritarian regimes such as Russia, [...]
Maurice Turner on Tackling the Remnants of Systematic Discrimination in the Tech Industry at Def Con
It’s easy to just accept the status quo even when it’s harmful because that’s just how it’s always been done. Discrimination in the tech industry is no different. The reuse and amplification of discriminatory language can have damaging effects on th [...]
Maurice Turner Weighs in on Hack of U.S. Prosecutors on CBSN
The Justice Department found that some of the nation's most prominent federal prosecutors had their email accounts hacked last year during the Solarwinds cyber espionage campaign. Maurice Turner, a cybersecurity fellow with The Alliance For Securing [...]
Maurice Turner Discusses the White House’s New Task Force to Curb Ransomware on CBS News
Federal officials are looking to crack down on ransomware attacks that are attacking critical U.S. infrastructure by implementing a new multi-agency task force. The announcement comes just days after the notorious Russian-linked ransomware group, RE [...]
Maurice Turner Discusses the United States’ Ransomware Deterrent Strategy on CBS News
Our current ransomware deterrent strategy is "simply not working," Cybersecurity Fellow Maurice Turner said. President Biden says he will "deliver" a message to Russian President Putin over the massive global ransomware attack, believed to have or [...]
From COVID-19 to the Tokyo Olympics: Russia’s Next Cyber and Information Battle
Covid-19 vaccines and “mask diplomacy” have been the centerpieces of many countries’ soft power strategies over the past year. Early in the pandemic, countries like Russia and China sought to use shipments of personal protective equipment (PPE) and [...]