Following a more than yearlong delay, the U.S. Department of Defense is poised to provide Congress its information operations strategy and posture review in weeks' time, DefenseScoop reports.
The Defense Department has had conversations stemming from the posture review and strategy, which have also prompted a reevaluation of its information operations, said Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict before the Senate Armed Services Committee Christopher Maier.
While the Defense Department has already moved to update its doctrine of information following criticism of its deteriorating information operations, Maier admitted that further investment and prioritization of information operations are needed as it seeks integrated deterrence.
"The Department must seek to avoid unknowingly driving competition to aggression. To strengthen deterrence while managing escalation risks, the Department will enhance its ability to operate in the information domain for example, by working to ensure that messages are conveyed effectively," said Maier, who emphasized the department's push to working alongside other federal departments and other allies and partners.
New attacks with the updated SysUpdate toolkit have been deployed by Chinese advanced persistent threat operation Budworm, also known as APT27, Emissary Panda, Bronze Union, Lucky Mouse, Iron Tiger, and Red Phoenix, against an Asian government and a Middle East-based telecommunications provider, reports The Hacker News.
Forty-five malicious NPM and PyPI packages have been deployed by threat actors to facilitate extensive data theft operations as part of a campaign that commenced on Sept. 12, according to BleepingComputer.
Sixty thousand emails from U.S. State Department accounts were noted by a staffer working for Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., to have been exfiltrated by Chinese threat actors during the widespread compromise of Microsoft email accounts that commenced in May, according to Reuters.