Woman Pleads Guilty to Illegally Accessing Celebs’ Passport Files

A State Department employee has pleaded guilty to lying to department officials about her alleged involvement in the unauthorized access of hundreds of confidential passport application files.

Brooke E. Reyna worked in various roles at the National Passport Center in Portsmouth, N.H., most recently as a passport specialist. She admitted to having access to official State Department computer databases in the regular course of…

State Department, Senate Consider Creation of ‘Cyber Ambassador’

Following cyber attacks against Google, officials at the State Department and Congress are considering proposals to create an ambassador-like cybersecurity post and the Senate Foreign Relations committee is considering tying U.S. financial aid to foreign countries’ ability to effectively police cyber crime.

The “cyber ambassador” would negotiate cyber policy at the UN and make sure the…

Independence Day Cyber Assault: Who’s Responsible?

On July 4, the websites of the Departments of Defense, State, and Homeland Security, and more than two dozen other websites in the US and South Korea experienced distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS).  This kind of brute-force attack has millions of zombie computers controlled by hackers (botnets) try to access secure content at once to overwhelm security protocols and bring websites offline.  Imagine someone installing remote controls on millions of cars…