Army soldier linked to Snowflake attack spree allegedly tried to sell data to foreign spies

'While financially motivated cybercriminals have always been opportunistic and sought to evade capture, this case shows potential crossover into national security threats,' Austin Larsen, principal threat analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said in an email. 'The alleged attempt to sell data to a foreign intelligence service isn’t just about financial gain — it indicates a willingness to engage with state-level actors, blurring the lines with espionage.'

U.S. Spy Agencies Get One-Stop Shop to Buy Highly Sensitive Personal

The ICDC project reflects a fundamental dissonance within the intelligence community, which acknowledges that CAI is a major threat to the public while refusing to cease buying it. 'The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits,' the ODNI wrote in its 2022 report.

‘No human hands’: NGA circulates AI-generated intel, director says

'I think it’s significant that you now have an entity within the IC that is putting out a template that literally acknowledges, for the purposes of our readership, what you are looking at has not been touched by human hands, okay, that this is 100 percent machine-generated,' [Director Frank Whitworth] said. 'It’s important [for] those combat commanders and the secretary [of defense] and the president that they have that knowledge, so that they can assess and possibly ask additional questions, and that they know also the risk continuum that we’re all operating under.'

OSINT overdose: Intelligence agencies seek new ways to manage surge of open-source intel

AI-powered machine translation, big data analytics, and now large language models are sucking up data from social media, smartphones and other 'open source' to generate unprecedented amounts of open-source intelligence. That means the 18 agencies of the Intelligence Community need new contracting and technical approaches to tap the rising power of OSINT without being overwhelmed by it, IC officials said last week.

Statistics, public data leaders condemn Trump’s order to fire BLS commissioner

'We are concerned because it’s a sign that politics beat facts — that anyone would question the process that BLS uses to regularly produce the data. Nothing has changed. This happens in all administrations,' Amy O’Hara, the president of the Association of Public Data Users, said in an interview with FedScoop.

DOGE is building a ‘master database’ of sensitive information, top Oversight Democrat says

'A pattern of technical malfeasance has emerged, showing these DOGE staffers are not abiding by our nation’s privacy and cybersecurity laws,' a senior aide on the House Oversight Committee told Nextgov/FCW. 'They are using excessive and unprecedented system access to intentionally cover their tracks and avoid oversight so they can creep on Americans' data from the shadows.'

Officials say federal employee background check system overhaul is finally on the right track

'We successfully enrolled roughly four million clearance holders in those CV services. And I do think that's a good news story in itself. It's a good news story because of the scale,' said David Cattler, the director of the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, at a press roundtable on Dec. 18.

A breach of Gravy Analytics’ huge trove of location data threatens the privacy of millions

Data privacy advocates have long warned of the risks that data brokers pose to individuals’ privacy and national security. Researchers with access to the sample of Gravy Analytics’ location data posted by the hacker say that the information can be used to extensively track people’s recent whereabouts.

The next year of AI target analysis

Rather than being stuck with a small number of expensive U.S. Government spy satellites — “exquisite” systems in intelligence lingo — Anthropic’s U.S. Government product manager was suggesting the usage of artificial intelligence to fuse together a stream of imagery from low-cost-to-launch commercial satellites.

Bloomberg Launches Company-Level Geopolitical Risk Scores Quantifying Country Risk, Built with Seerist Threat Intelligence

Bloomberg today launched geopolitical country-of-risk scores for 7 million companies built with Seerist’s leading geopolitical risk and security intelligence. Available on the Bloomberg Terminal and via Data License for enterprise-wide use, these scores enable risk managers, portfolio managers and traders to quickly identify 29 political, operational, security, cyber or maritime country-level threats impacting their portfolios.

Protecting US supply chains from foreign influence

In an increasingly interconnected global economy, supply chains face growing risks from foreign influence, with critical implications for U.S. security. Federal agencies tasked with safeguarding these supply chains are under mounting pressure to proactively identify and mitigate these threats before they disrupt operations or compromise national security.

Palantir: The Most Mysterious Company in Silicon Valley

Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it. Luckily, WIRED staff writer Caroline Haskins joins us to decode Palantir for us.

How the CIA is using AI for its open source intelligence mission

As head of the open source enterprise for the CIA’s Directorate of Digital Innovation, Kevin Carlson is helping usher in AI for the OSINT mission set. During a recent interview on the sidelines of the Special Competitive Studies Project’s AI+ Expo, Carlson shared the potential for AI in open-source intelligence, how the CIA is looking to operationalize AI, the impact of the technology on the CIA workforce, and much more.

The Intelligence Edge: Transforming Business Data Into Strategic Advantage

This on-demand recorded discussion, featuring experts from Moody's and Intel, explores how agencies can leverage business data for strategic advantage, threat analysis, and decision-making in national security and law enforcement.

The Tech and Tradecraft Behind Open Source Intelligence

The podcast explores the maturation of open-source intelligence (OSINT), detailing the blend of technology and tradecraft involved, with insights from experts at ZeroFox, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Authentic8 on managing attribution, collection, provenance, and human judgment.