Monthly Archives: July 2020

National Security Agency (NSA), U.S. intelligence agency within the Department of Defense that is responsible for cryptographic and communications intelligence and security. Its headquarters are in Fort Meade, Maryland.

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The NSA grew out of the communications intelligence activities of U.S. military units during World War II. It was established in 1952 by a presidential directive from Harry S. Truman in which he specified its mission as

to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto.

The NSA was created in part out of the belief that the importance and distinct character of communications intelligence warranted an organization distinct from both the armed forces and the other intelligence agencies. While it operates within the Department of Defense, the NSA also belongs to the Intelligence Community (a coalition of 17 intelligence agencies) and as such acts under the supervision of the director of national intelligence. The director of the NSA is a military officer of flag rank (i.e., a general or an admiral) with a minimum of three stars. Not being a creation of Congress, the NSA often acts outside of congressional review; it is the most secret of all U.S. intelligence agencies.

The agencys mission includes the protection and formulation of codes, ciphers, and other cryptology for the U.S. military and other government agencies as well as the interception, analysis, and solution of coded transmissions by electronic or other means. The agency conducts research into all forms of electronic transmissions. It also operates posts for the interception of signals around the world. In 1972 a joint organization, the Central Security Service (CSS), was created to coordinate the intelligence efforts of the NSA with the U.S. military. The director of the NSA also heads the CSS (under the title of Chief, CSS).

The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) restricts the NSA mandate to the interception of foreign communications and forbids the agency from targeting a U.S. citizen unless the latter is considered an agent of a foreign power. In exceptional cases that are considered critical to national security, the agency can obtain a warrant to intercept domestic communications. In 2008, amendments to FISA relaxed those restrictions and allowed the agency to monitor domestic communications without a warrant as long as one party is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.

In 2013 NSA activities were put in the limelight after a former computer security contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked classified information about two surveillance programsone collecting information from U.S. Internet service providers (PRISM) and the second collecting so-called metadata on cellular phone calls (information including phone numbers and length of the calls but not their content). Those programs were designed to target non-Americans, but they also collected a massive amount of information from Americans with whom those individuals had communicated. Other NSA programs included the extensive, worldwide, and allegedly untargeted collection of text messages (Dishfire) and of the locations of cell phones.

While less known to the American public than the Central Intelligence Agency, the NSA is believed to be far larger in size in terms of workforce and budget. According to Michael Hayden, a former director (19992005) of the NSA, it is also the worlds largest collector of foreign signals intelligence.

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National Security Agency | History, Role, & Surveillance ...

Microsoft released a patch for Windows 10 and Server 2016 today after the National Security Agency found and disclosed a serious vulnerability. It's a rare but not unprecedented tip-off, one that underscores the flaw's severityand maybe hints at new priorities for the NSA.

The bug is in Windows' mechanism for confirming the legitimacy of software or establishing secure web connections. If the verification check itself isn't trustworthy, attackers can exploit that fact to remotely distribute malware or intercept sensitive data.

"[We are] recommending that network owners expedite implementation of the patch immediately as we will also be doing," Anne Neuberger, head of the NSA's Cybersecurity Directorate, said on a call with reporters on Tuesday. "When we identified a broad cryptographic vulnerability like this we quickly turned to work with the company to ensure that they could mitigate it."

"It will be a long day for a lot of Windows administrators around the world."

Kenn White, Open Crypto Audit Project

The flaw is specifically in Microsoft's CryptoAPI service, which helps developers cryptographically "sign" software and data or generate digital certificates used in authenticationall to prove trustworthiness and validity when Windows checks for it on users' devices. An attacker could potentially exploit the bug to undermine crucial protections, and ultimately take control of victim devices.

"Think of signing malware as if it's trusted by Microsoft or intercepting encrypted web traffic," says David Kennedy, CEO of the corporate security evaluation firm TrustedSec, who formerly worked at the NSA. "That would completely evade so many protections."

As researchers and cyber criminals alike study the vulnerability and rush to develop a hacking tool that takes advantage of it, the scale of the risk to users will become more clear. But a flaw in a crucial cryptographic component of Windows is certainly problematic, especially given that Windows 10 is the most-used operating system in the world, installed on more than 900 million PCs.

"This is a core, low-level piece of the Windows operating system and one that establishes trust between administrators, regular users, and other computers on both the local network and the internet," says Kenn White, security principal at MongoDB and director of the Open Crypto Audit Project. "If the technology that ensures that trust is vulnerable, there could be catastrophic consequences. But precisely what scenarios and preconditions are requiredwe're still analyzing. It will be a long day for a lot of Windows administrators around the world."

The NSA's decision to share the vulnerability brings to mind the NSA hacking tool known as Eternal Blue, which exploited a Windows bug patched in early 2017. That flaw was present in all versions of Windows available at the time, and the NSA had known about the bugand exploited it for digital espionagefor more than five years. Eventually, the NSA lost control of Eternal Blue; a few weeks after Microsoft issued a fix, a mysterious hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers leaked the tool online. Criminals and nation state hackers alike had a field day with the tool, as Windows machines around the world slowly got around to patching.

The Windows 10 validation bug may be the NSA's attempt to avoid a similar debacle. And unlike Eternal Blue, Neuberger made a point to say that the agency had not used the exploit itself.

In fact, Neuberger said that disclosing the code verification bug to Microsoft and the public is part of a new NSA initiative in which the agency will share its vulnerability findings more quickly and more often. The effort will work alongside the existing Vulnerability Equities Process run by the National Security Council, which weighs the national security importance of keeping hacking tools secret versus disclosing vulnerabilities.

That's why the NSA didn't just disclose the vulnerability, but made its role public. "Its hard for entities to trust that we indeed take this seriously," she said, "and [that] ensuring that vulnerabilities can be mitigated is an absolute priority."

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Windows 10 Has a Security Flaw So Severe the NSA Disclosed ...

Ted McConnell is Senior Policy Advisor forCivXNow Coalition, and Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, is former General Counsel at CIA and NSA and is a member of the executive board of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law. @CivXNow

OPINION These are confounding and painful times. In recent months, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare a tragic divide in health outcomes among communities based on race, ethnicity, and wealth. And now, this problem which exists in every aspect of society and its opportunitiesincluding in education, housing, and employmenthas been further exacerbated by yet another example of the cultural disconnect between local police and the minority residents they are sworn to protect. The resulting outrage at the latest gratuitous killing of a Black man was predictable.

Long simmering grievances within the Black community about the governments historic mistreatment that has been enabled by a dominant white societys lack of concern have been worsened by the frustrating inability to effectuate real change. It has been gratifying to see how largely peaceful protests have brought these inequities so clearly and responsibly to the fore. At the same time, it is also troubling that some parties appear to view this tragedy irresponsibly as a way to stoke even greater anger and dissension and increasing polarization. Unfortunately, as recent experience teaches, they will not be alone. We must expect that some, among them hostile foreign actors, will take full advantage of the current crisis to amplify anger as a way to deepen the nations ethnic, racial, and income divides. As always, their goal will be to erode confidence in our democratic system and foster a sense of hopelessness about the possibility of reform and accountability.

Such foreign threats, well documented inrecent reports, are the topic of a subsequent blog post. What will be clear is that these efforts are designed to weaken the United States from within, encouraging internal dissension and undermining support for government institutions and civil society, particularlyamong those long marginalized. Such efforts end-run the historic U.S. national security posture of projecting force away from the domestic arena to keep the homeland safe. By operatingwithinthe United States to amplify domestic grievances, such attacks undermine national cohesionwithout the need for an external challenge. As such, they are as much a national security threat as would be an externally launched attack by a hostile armed force. These threats find fertile ground in the current outrage over police misconduct and the disparate impact of COVID-19 on our disadvantaged minority citizens.

While profoundly disturbing, the widespread protests and the outrage they reflect should not surprise us. They result from inattention to legitimate grievances of those who have long suffered from inequitable treatment based on race, ethnicity, and income. This situation is reflected in the sharp decline in public confidence in government and civil society which has been apparent for some time. In 2019, this lack of trust in the government was well documented by the Pew Research Center. The centersJuly 2019 reportdetails the loss of trust of Americans in the government, the news media, and one another. Perhaps most disturbing was the finding that almost half of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 fell into the low trust category, as compared to one-fifth of those over 65. Furthermore, [o]nly 17%of Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always (3%) or most of the time (14%). And last month,The New YorkTimesinterviewed a cross section of people and reached the same conclusion. In fact, thisreportingsuggested that the level of trust in the government to do the right thing may have actually declined below the troubling 17% reported by Pew.

The picture is bleak but not without hope. The Pew Research Center reported that more than 90% of those surveyed, regardless of political affiliation, believed it important to improve the level of confidence Americans have in government and each other. And an encouraging 80% believed such improvement was possible. Perhaps the deeply upsetting current crisis can nonetheless serve as a catalyst for change. If so, we dare not ignore this opportunity.

And so now, even in the midst of a singularly painful period of protests, a brief pause is in order. If we are to formulate an approach to addressing the current situation effectively, the first step must be to understand how we arrived at this point. Only then can we fashion a strategy to begin addressing what can be done in useful response to the outpouring of rage at the current state of affairs across a broad range of issuesissues that disproportionately impact the nations disadvantaged minority populations. Stated otherwise, the COVID-19 pandemic and protests about police misconduct have made clear the problems our democracy faces. The question that remains is how best to achieve lasting change. It is a question thateveryAmerican, white and non-white alike, must acknowledge and embrace. In the end, our democracy only works for any one of us if it works for all.

The answer begins with a truism. A democratic republic depends on a citizenry and an electorate that is informed about the issues and challenges of the day and is equipped to take advantage of the mechanisms of its government to achieve change. This is, of course, the fundamental premise on which our system of public education is based. Our schools are expected to teachallcitizens about their history and their government and, most importantly, to enable their effective participation. Indeed, one explanation for the outrage exhibited in recent demonstrations may be that those most directly impacted by unacceptable policies in policing, health care, education, and economic opportunity are frustrated by their inability to achieve lasting change. This may be because they have not received the civic education they need to empower them in managing the levers of public policy and government fundamental to achieving real change.

In fact, this analytical construct finds considerable support when todays state of civic education is considered. In subsequent blog posts, we will describe countless surveys that chart a decline in civic education and document the lack of understanding of all citizens about their government. The conclusion is unassailable: in recent decades there has been a precipitous decline in attention to civic literacy at all levels of the educational continuum, from secondary schools to college and graduate teacher education. Most recently, the Department of Education released the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) which documents the outcome of the 2018 Civics and U.S. History exams given to 8thgraders across the country. Considered the nations Report Card, theNAEP resultsshow that between 2014 and 2018, only 24% of respondents scored at or above the level of proficiencya dismal showing relatively unchanged for many years. Upon release of the results, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos candidlynotedthat We cannot continue to excuse this problem away. Instead, we need to fundamentally rethink education in America. It is the only way our nations students will be in a position to lead our nation and the world.

Even more significantly, this failure of civic education resulting from declining time and attention over several generations has likely contributed to aloss of appreciation for democracyas a system of government based on the rule of law. It seems equally obvious that the fall-off in civic literacy is part of the explanation for the current political dysfunction and loss of faith in our politics and government institutions. It may also contribute to the intense frustration of those now protesting a wide range of societal inequities from police misconduct to health, education, and economic disparities laid bare by COVID-19.

Yet despite the grave state of civic education today, efforts at reform are underway and have begun to show promise. The CivXNow Coalition has created a national movement to improve and strengthen state and national policies and practices in delivering civic education. These efforts have produced recent successes in several states which, among other things, have developed and implemented new learning standards, measures of assessment and accountability, and course and time requirements for civic education. These measures are designed to engage and empower students rather than to rely upon rote learning.

In the end, however, an even broader commitment to civic education reform and understanding, both in formal education and throughout society, is needed. Once again, there is hopeful news. In March 2020, reports by two commissions formed to address completely different challenges facing the nation found that improving civic literacy was a fundamental starting point. After two and a half years of review, the final report, Inspired to Serve of the congressionally chartered National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS), concluded that to increase participation in a wide range of service activities it would be essential to strengthen and expand civic educationthe necessary foundation for developing a culture of service. Similarly, The Cyberspace Solarium Commission found that enhancing civic education and media literacy would be critical to protecting the nation against democracy-undermining cyber threats.

These developments should inform any response to the current tragic circumstances that have so galvanized protesters in countless cities around the nation. The slide into civic illiteracy disproportionately impacts those communities most in need of advocating for themselves, once again highlighting the divide based on race, ethnicity, and income. The lack of civic education available in these communities translates into reduced levels of political engagement. While overall voting participation by youth is poor, not surprisingly black and Latinx youth vote at even lower rates than their white counterparts. This adds to the dysfunction in our political and governmental systems todaythe heart of protestors concerns. To protect our constitutional democracy from internal and external threats, improved civic understanding and engagement across all parts of our society, in our educational institutions and beyond, are more than critical needs. In todays threat environment, they have become a national security imperative.

We hope this introduction will encourage learning more about the relationship among civic education, domestic tranquility, and national security at what may arguably be an existential moment in the history of our democracy.

This piece was first published by our friends at the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at The University of Pennsylvania

Read more expert-driven national security insight, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

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A National Crisis: The Imperative for Improving Civic Education - The Cipher Brief