We assess with moderate confidence that cyber actors, including those who support violent extremism, are likely to continue targeting first responders on the World Wide Web, including by distributing personally identifiable information (PII) for the purpose of soliciting attacks from willing sympathizers in the homeland, hacking government websites, or attacking 911 phone systems to hinder first responders’ ability to respond to crises.
The Delaware State Police (DSP) Intelligence Unit is providing the following information for officer safety and situational awareness. Officers should be mindful, when placing prisoners in custody, of smart watches and similar devices that can connect via Bluetooth to a cellular device. Smart watches have the capability to both make and receive phone calls and text messages, as well as erasing same. This could cause an issue if a cellular device and it’s contents are being used as evidence. Through experimentation at Troop 7, it was determined that if a prisoner is in the detention area and the phone is seized, the watch could still be operational.
The EMP protection guidelines presented in this report were initially developed by Dr. George H. Baker, based on his previous work where he led the Department of Defense program to develop EMP protection standards while at the Defense Nuclear Agency (DNA) and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). He is currently serving as a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and is emeritus professor of applied science at James Madison University (JMU). He presently serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Resilient Societies, the Board of Advisors for the Congressional Task Force on National and Homeland Security, the JMU Research and Public Service Advisory Board, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation GMD Task Force, the EMP Coalition, and as a Senior Scientist for the Congressional EMP Commission.
Autonomous vehicles collect and process data from their environments, taking actions that can either help or replace drivers. OCIA assesses that these vehicles will benefit society by improving road safety and reducing deaths, injuries, and costs associated with collisions. Autonomous vehicles will also likely lead to a decrease in traffic congestion, decreasing fuel consumption and emissions per mile, and helping save drivers’ money and time. However, as vehicles become increasingly connected and a part of the Internet of Things, vulnerabilities and potential consequences are likely to increase unless cybersecurity is better integrated into vehicle design and development. Legal and regulatory gaps exist on issues such as collision liability and safety standards; if these gaps are not addressed, cities and states might implement their own laws and regulations, creating inefficiencies for automobile manufacturers, shipping companies, and drivers. Moreover, fully autonomous vehicles will likely have an adverse effect on the professional driver workforce when bus, taxi, and truck drivers are eventually replaced.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging risk that will affect critical infrastructure (CI) as it becomes common throughout the United States. The purpose of this research paper is to analyze the narratives about AI to understand the prominence of perceived key benefits and threats from AI adoption and the resulting implications for infrastructure security and resilience. Narratives are strongly held beliefs, and understanding them will help decision makers mitigate potential consequences before they become significant problems.
In January 2016, EPIC published Intelligence Note 02303-16a, this product provided analysis of data provided by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and open source reporting that indicated Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) continued to operate and profit from marijuana sales in legalized U.S. marijuana markets. EPIC research further showed that legalization of marijuana in some U.S. markets had not adversely impacted TCO profitability in marijuana markets, and that the effort of legalization had conversely brought new opportunities for illicit profits from marijuana sales. As of January 2017, EPIC research indicates that TCOs continue to exploit legalized marijuana markets in the United States.
The Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center (OCIAC) has received reporting indicating cybercriminals are manipulating e-mail filters as a means to monitor and divert e-mail communications.
Terrorist and violent extremist groups have long expressed interest in poisoning and adulterating food and beverage supplies in the West but rarely use this as a tactic. Nonetheless, recent incidents in Europe and Africa underscore the continued interest by some groups in targeting food products at point-of-sale, distribution, and storage. The mere threat of product adulteration in the Homeland almost certainly would cause psychological and economic harm. While we have not seen any specific, credible terrorist threats against Homeland food production and distribution infrastructure, we cannot rule out the possibility of inspired violent extremists or disgruntled insiders attempting to adulterate or poison food and beverages with commonly available toxic industrial chemicals or crude biological toxins due to the relative ease of product manipulation, especially at the last point of sale, which criminal actors have demonstrated consistently in the past.
OCIA assesses that if specific industrial control systems (ICS) were successfully infected with ransomware, it could affect the ability of certain sectors to provide real-time management and control of large networks of geographically scattered equipment. Although security researchers have demonstrated the possibility of ransomware targeting control systems, OCIA assesses that such an attack is highly unlikely given the higher success rate against consumer and business systems, the likelihood that business and process control networks are segmented, and the ability for operators to take a control system out of service and employ manual overrides.
Public Safety personnel are urged to use caution when sharing information via social media. With recent officer-involved shootings around the country, those who support attacks against public safety affiliates can gain access to information shared online and may use it to condone violence.
On May 12, 2017, organizations across the world reported ransomware infections impacting their computer systems. The infections, caused by a ransomware strain referred to as WannaCry, restricts users’ access to a computer and demands a ransom to unlock it. The U.S. Department of Justice defines ransomware as, a type of malicious software cyber actors use to deny access to systems or data until the ransom is paid. After the initial infection, ransomware attempts to spread through systems and networks.
Use of vehicles by violent extremists for ramming attacks has increased steadily, while use of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) remains rare outside the Middle East. Given the ease with which ramming attacks can be accomplished, it is likely use of this tactic will continue to rise. Unlike VBIEDs, ramming attacks require little specialized training or skill, present minimal risk of detection when acquiring the weapon, and offer flexibility with regard to preparation, timing, and target. Foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) have pointedly encouraged use of vehicle ramming attacks, offering explicit tactical advice on vehicle selection, driving tips to maximize fatalities, and targeting suggestions that include parades, festivals, street fairs, outdoor markets or conventions, political rallies, and other crowded targets of opportunity.
Vehicle-ramming attacks are considered unsophisticated, in that a perpetrator could carry out such an attack with minimal planning and training. It is likely that terrorist groups will continue to encourage aspiring attackers to employ unsophisticated tactics such as vehicle-ramming, since these types of attacks minimize the potential for premature detection and could inflict mass fatalities if successful. Furthermore, events that draw large groups of people—and thus present an attractive vehicle ramming target—are usually scheduled and announced in advance, which greatly facilitates attack planning and training activities.
Cloud services offer a number of benefits such as scalability, high availability, and decreased ownership cost. As a result, owners and operators in several critical infrastructure sectors such as Communications, Energy, Financial Services, Information Technology, and Transportation Services have migrated in-house computing resources to cloud infrastructures. However, cloud service environments still possess many of the same potential vulnerabilities associated with internally hosted environments, as well as additional exploits to virtual systems or networks. Owners and operators of critical infrastructure need to fully understand the risk environment as they address current cloud services and consider additional migration.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assesses that given the high value of patient information and proprietary data on the black market, the Healthcare and Public Health Sector will continue to be one of the primary targets for malicious cyber actors. Stolen health data sells on the black market for more than 10 to 20 times the price of stolen credit card data. DHS assesses that growth in the medical device market over the next 4 years will result in more devices connected to the Internet, and an increase in the number of cyber-related incidents that target those devices. This is partly because manufacturers do not place enough emphasis on the security of medical devices.
It seemed as if war had been declared on cops. First a sniper in Dallas and then an active shooter in Baton Rouge. “It has been a tough week physically and emotionally,” said Senior Corporal Trevor Perez, one of a couple dozen Dallas police officers and honor guard members to make the seven-hour trip to Baton Rouge to attend the funerals of Baton Rouge police officers, in this case that of Matthew Gerald. All the more tough because the corporal and his colleagues had just recently paid their respects at nearly a dozen similar funerals back in Texas.
An unidentified actor or actors between November 2016 and January 2017 targeted a US water and sewage authority’s network, resulting in excessive cellular charges and unusual traffic on ports 10000 and 9600, according to an FBI source with excellent access who spoke in confidence but whose reliability cannot be determined. The FBI source indicated that four of the seven devices on the authority’s cellular data plan were impacted with high data usage, which was likely a result of compromised network devices. The November 2016–December 2016 billing cycle totaled $45,000, and the December 2016–January 2017 billing cycle totaled $53,000.
This Joint Threat Assessment (JTA) addresses threats to the 2017 Presidential Address to a Joint Session of Congress (the Presidential Address) at the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, on 28 February 2017. This assessment does not consider nonviolent civil disobedience tactics (for example, protests without a permit) that are outside the scope of federal law enforcement jurisdiction; however, civil disobedience tactics designed to cause a hazard to public safety and/or law enforcement fall within the scope of this assessment.
Recent calls over the past year for attacks on hospitals in the West by media outlets sympathetic to the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS) highlight terrorists’ perception of hospitals as viable targets for attack. Targeting hospitals and healthcare facilities is consistent with ISIS’s tactics in Iraq and Syria, its previous calls for attacks on hospitals in the West, and the group’s calls for attacks in the West using “all available means.” While we have not seen any specific, credible threat against hospitals and healthcare facilities in the United States, we remain concerned that calls for such attacks may resonate with some violent extremists and lone offenders in the Homeland because of their likely perceived vulnerabilities and value as targets.
This joint DHS and FBI Assessment examines the possible reasons why anarchist extremist attacks in certain countries abroad and in the United States differ in the frequency of incidents and degree of lethality employed in order to determine ways US anarchist extremists actions might become more lethal in the future. This Assessment is intended to establish a baseline comparison of the US and foreign anarchist extremist movements and create new lines of research; follow-on assessments will update the findings identified in the paper, to include the breadth of data after the end of the reporting period (as warranted by new information), and identify new areas for DHS and FBI collaboration on the topic. This Assessment is also produced in anticipation of a heightened threat of anarchist extremist violence in 2016 related to the upcoming Democratic and Republican National Conventions—events historically associated with violence from the movement.
A 25-ton commercial truck transporting steel beams from Poland to Germany plowed into crowds at a Christmas market in Berlin at about 2000 local time on 19 December, killing at least 12 people and injuring 48 others, several critically, according to media reporting citing public security officials involved in the investigation. The truck was reportedly traveling at approximately 40 miles per hour when it rammed the Christmas market stands. Police estimate the vehicle traveled 80 yards into the Christmas market before coming to a halt.
A 2014 presentation from the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations discussing the criminal use and exploitation of digital currencies such as bitcoin.
This Joint Analysis Report (JAR) is the result of analytic efforts between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This document provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities. The U.S. Government is referring to this malicious cyber activity by RIS as GRIZZLY STEPPE.
An October 2016 presentation from the Department of Homeland Security on cyber threats to the nation’s infrastructure.
This Reference Aid is intended to provide information on malicious terrorism hoaxes that will continue to challenge first responder resources throughout the Homeland and territories. This Reference Aid is provided by I&A, DIAC, NCRIC, NVRIC, and NJ-ROIC to support their respective activities, to provide situational awareness, and to assist federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government counterterrorism and law enforcement officials and first responders with recognizing the indicators and implications of malicious terrorism hoaxes. The use of hoax calls may also be used as a technique to lure authorities to a particular location for the purpose of conducting a potential attack, but is not discussed in this article, as luring is viewed as its own distinct tactic.