General who confirmed Stuxnet cyber attack is pardoned

Retired Gen. James Cartwright, formerly the second-most senior officer in the entire U.S. military, had been facing a possible two-year sentence at the end of the month.

The Marine Corps four-star general who pled guilty to confirming the secret U.S.-Israeli cyberattack dubbed Stuxnet was pardoned Thursday by President Barack Obama.

Retired Gen. James Cartwright, formerly the vice chairman of the joint chiefs and the second-most senior officer in the entire U.S. military, had been facing a possible two-year sentence at the end of the month, according to court documents. He pled guilty in October to one felony count of making false statements.

According to court documents, the New York Times’ reporter David Sanger already had the story when he called Cartwright for confirmation, sometime in early 2012. Cartwright said he spoke to him — and later to Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek — to try to persuade them “not to report information that would be harmful to the U.S.” and was successful in that.

But when asked about both reporters in Nov. 2012 by FBI agents, during a voluntary interview where he was not represented by counsel, Cartwright said he had never discussed classified information with either of them. He went back to the agents two days later and made a clean breast of his contacts with the reporters.

Stuxnet was a computer worm that caused Iranian uranium purification centrifuges to destroy themselves while the system that monitored their operation told engineers all was well. The sophisticated, multi-stage cyberweapon marked the first hacking attack against industrial control systems — the specialized computers that run factories, refineries and chemical plants.

In a statement, Cartwright thanked the president, noting his “greatest pride” in serving the U.S. military for more than 40 years and concluding “God bless the United States of America.”

His attorney, Gregory Craig, also issued a statement calling the pardon “wise and just.”

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Chinese espionage groups swarm to exploit triple-link chain of zero-days

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure