counterintelligence

The Cipher Brief Threat Conference has been re-scheduled for September 13-15, 2020.  This special series of national security briefings has been launched to keep our public-private threat conference community together and engaged on the issues that matter until we can safely gather again. Conference speaker Christopher Costa is a former ...

The U.S. is considering whether it will expel more than a dozen Saudi Arabian military students after a shooting at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida last month that killed three people and injured eight others. In the aftermath of the shooting, the Pentagon ordered a review of how DoD ...

Bill Evanina is the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) - a part of the U.S. Intelligence Community that leads and supports the government’s counterintelligence and security efforts.    The NCSC tackles that mission in a number of ways, but a large part of their task is ...

U.S. counterintelligence and law enforcement agencies in 2010 scored an impressive victory when they identified, arrested, and expelled ten “illegal” officers of the Russian foreign intelligence agency, the SVR. Posing as ordinary American citizens, these Russian spies were tasked with spotting, assessing, and ultimately recruiting industrialists, scientists, political figures, and ...

In the wake of this week’s deadly terrorist attack in New York City, Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s so-called “extreme vetting” measures and rebuked technology companies for failing to quickly provide law enforcement with encrypted information to assist terrorism investigations. He also defended the U.S. ...

The re-authorization of the National Security Agency’s internet surveillance program received a boost Tuesday from President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the national security division of the Department of Justice. John Demers, nominated by Trump to be assistant attorney general, appeared on Capitol Hill for his confirmation hearing before the ...

Tradecraft. A term popularized in the novels of John le Carré, but practiced by spies throughout history. Tradecraft includes a number of methodologies, ranging from chalk-marked dead drops, and honey traps, to wiretapping, losing a tail, and safe houses. Spies have to master their craft if they are to be ...

Intelligence officers must often use a false identity – a legend or cover. How has social media and digital technology changed how they create and preserve these cover identities, and what have counterintelligence units traditionally looked for when trying to identify foreign spies? The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with ...

Intelligence officers’ tradecraft is highly guarded for good reason. One of its most important aspects is establishing a cover identity so foreign governments and hostile groups are not aware who is spying on them. The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA station chief, about what ...

The leak of documents allegedly describing secret CIA hacking techniques has shined a light on the intelligence agency’s use of contractors and its efforts to tackle the insider threat problem. WikiLeaks published the documents on Tuesday, and the CIA has not confirmed the authenticity of the files. Little is known ...

Editor’s Note: The ongoing debate over the intelligence involving the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee is highlighting a lot of other underlying issues when it comes to our Intelligence Community, what we expect from them, and how policymakers use the information they gather and assess.  Congressman Adam Schiff, ...

Amid ongoing debate over encrypted communications, hinging, as it does, on striking a balance between the need to defend America and the need to ensure that in so doing we do not undermine the principles that are America, it is worth recalling where this all began.  And it all began ...

“But what is new is that the small fry also have the power of betrayal…Science, adding to our armoury, continually demands more mechanics and more clerks and with every demand makes the problem of security more difficult to solve.” - Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason (1966) When West ...