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Washington recruited private hackers for help. Far-right pressure is pushing them away.

24 0
06.02.2024

Some of the country’s top cybersecurity experts who’ve been helping protect critical networks say they're quietly retreating from a highly touted government partnership, citing frustrations with its management and pressure from conservative critics.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency launched the initiative — known as the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative — in 2021 to enlist outside tech pros in the fight against cybercrime gangs and state-backed hacking outfits following a series of high-profile breaches.

The threat-sharing hub allows elite corporate hackers to quickly exchange signs of suspicious activity with the U.S. government and IT workers defending key parts of the economy, including schools, water facilities, hospitals and pipelines, to respond to or prevent hacks. Participants hail from tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon and Google, as well as infrastructure operators, foreign governments, nonprofits and midsize security firms.

But five external computer security professionals involved in the JCDC told POLITICO they and many colleagues have stopped contributing or have significantly pared back their involvement.

The JCDC "has been dead for a while now,” said Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, a senior technical analyst at SentinelOne, a billion-dollar security firm that participates in the program.

While many of their complaints stem from how the program is organized, the discontent also represents another indirect impact of Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, now threatening to hamper largely apolitical cybersecurity work: CISA’s efforts to combat disinformation ahead of the 2020 election has made it a favorite target of conservatives, who accuse it of trying to censor their views online.

Even though the JCDC plays no role in online content moderation, the amped-up scrutiny of CISA has increasingly ensnared the agency’s external partners, making JCDC participants fearful they could be caught in the crosshairs.

“There is a huge chilling effect going on,” said Marc Rogers, the founder of a nonprofit cyber defense group, the CTI-League, that worked with the agency before the formation of the JCDC. “There is a big worry now in the cybersecurity industry that there is a witch hunt going on against us.

The pullback spells particular trouble for the government because most U.S. networks run on hardware and software that is privately owned. That means CISA often has to lean on tech firms and external cyber specialists to fulfill its core mandate: protecting sensitive government data and critical U.S.........

© Politico


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