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Expert Q&A: North Korea and Russia – ‘Fighting and Dying’ Together

EXPERT Q&A — Western officials report that of the estimated 11,000 North Korean troops sent to fight in Russia’s western Kursk region, 4,000 have already been killed, wounded, missing or captured — a [...] More

After Trump Assassination Attempt, a Reckoning for America

EXPERT Q&A — In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, officials and experts are working to assess how the attack [...] More

More from Daniel Hoffman

Terrorist Groups are Again Thriving in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

OPINION — Last month, the U.S. Central Command said it conducted 20 joint operations in Iraq and 11 in Syria, killing five Islamic State operatives [...] More

Putin's Godfather Role of a Lifetime

In light of the reported death of Wagner Group Chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, The Cipher Brief tapped a number of experts for their thoughts on what his [...] More

What My Wife Kim Taught Me About the Power of a Mother's Love

OPINION — Many years ago, I was involved in a sensitive exfiltration operation at CIA, where our team rescued a source and his family from harm’s [...] More

Russia Is Kind of Becoming a 'Colony of China'

Russia's economic struggles in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine are forcing Moscow to become more closely aligned with China, India, North Korea [...] More

The People in the Best Position to Stop Putin are His Own

The Cipher Brief: Understanding that there is no clear view into what Russian President Vladimir Putin is really thinking - what do you think Ukraine [...] More
Want to Dominate in Cyber? Better Change your Policy.

Want to Dominate in Cyber? Better Change your Policy.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE/OPINION — Following the early 2021 cyberattacks against Colonial Pipeline that led to widespread gas shortages on the U.S East [...] More

Get Ready for China's Hypersonic Challenge

Hoffman’s piece was first published in The Washington TimesOPINION — Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping has declared [...] More

Cyberattacks from Russia and the Targeting of US Businesses

Cipher Brief Expert Dan Hoffman is a former senior CIA Officer, three-time station chief and former senior executive Clandestine Services officer.  He is currently a national security analyst with Fox News. This column first appeared in FOX News Opinion on FoxNews.com.

Shawnee Delaney was a Clandestine Officer and former Detachment Chief for the Defense Intelligence Agency and IT Specialist for the Department of Homeland Security for 10 years. She is currently the CEO of Vaillance Group.

OPINION — For Russia today, past is prologue.

The KGB was the vanguard of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was all about cloak and dagger espionage. Russian president Vladimir Putin served in the KGB and later as Director of Russia’s ruthless FSB security police. It should therefore come as no surprise that he is directing full throttled attacks on the U.S. in the unregulated, wide-open, man-made domain of cyberspace, which has become the backbone infrastructure of 21st century commerce and free expression.

The Kremlin allows criminal cyber hacking groups like DarkSide and REvil to homestead on its territory.

In April 2021, DarkSide launched a cyberattack on Colonial Pipeline, the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S., which was forced to shut down its network for days.  DarkSide hacked into the network using a compromised password, encrypted files to deny Colonial Pipeline administrators access, and extorted the company with a five million dollar bitcoin ransom payment to restore service.

REvil conducted a destructive cyberattack in May 2021 against JBS, the world’s largest meat processing company.  REvil struck again in July with a supply chain ransomware attack on Kaseya, which led to the compromise of over 1000 companies.

Most recently, Russian Intelligence, well known for hacking U.S. social media, the Democratic National Committee, and Secretary Clinton’s email server, penetrated SolarWinds operating systems and spread malware into its "Orion" security software, through which Russia gained a backdoor into SolarWinds’ 30,000 customers’ information technology systems, including major Fortune 500 companies.   The Kremlin stole protected information from a panoply of private sector and U.S. government agencies.

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After 9/11, Good Intelligence is More Important than Ever

Cipher Brief Expert Daniel Hoffman is a former senior officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served as a three-time station chief and a senior executive Clandestine Services officer.  He led large-scale HUMINT (human intelligence gathering) and technical programs and completed tours of duty in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and war zones in the Middle East and South Asia. Hoffman also served as director of the CIA’s Middle East and North Africa Division. He is currently a national security analyst with Fox News. His piece was first published in The Washington Times.

OPINION — On the morning of September 11, 2001, my then-CIA colleague Rob was in Manhattan on the subway, headed to a 9 a.m. meeting in the World Trade Center. At 8:46 a.m., moments before he exited the subway, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the Center’s North Tower.

Rob exited the subway station only to be pushed back inside the train by a throng of people hysterically running down the stairs, fleeing the chaos after the first plane crashed.

Rob managed to get out at the next stop. Not a native New Yorker and having spent comparatively little time in Manhattan, Rob used the gigantic twin towers as a guide as he made his way back to the meeting he was still planning to attend. With dust in the air clouding his vision, he at first thought, like so many other eyewitnesses, that a small plane had accidentally crashed into one of the twin towers.

As he got closer to the World Trade Center, Rob encountered bystanders shouting about the first plane crash.

Rob was walking in between the two towers at the World Trade Center when United Airlines Flight 175, which had taken off from Boston’s Logan Airport with 51 passengers and 5 crew onboard, crashed into the South tower at 9:03 a.m.

A gulf of warm air shot down towards Rob’s body and sucked out all the oxygen around him. For a moment, he could not breathe.

Everyone looked up to the sky in shock as debris swirled in the air and covered their shoes.

Now there was no question that the U.S. was under attack — not in the Middle East or Africa, where our embassies and military had been targeted in recent years past, but at home in the heart of the world’s greatest financial center.

Rob watched with unimaginable shock and horror as people jumped to their deaths from the World Trade Center’s upper floors. Policemen were putting themselves in harm’s way as they directed people to safety from the danger zone.

Rob had begun walking away from the site and moved to safety just minutes before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. Walking north towards mid-town when the North Tower collapsed 29 minutes later, Rob was close enough to feel the impact and see the total destruction of one of New York’s most recognizable landmarks.

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