CIA nominee tells Senate he, too, wants to go on cyber offense

John Ratcliffe said he wants to develop cyber offense tools and supports a cyber-focused deterrence strategy.

CIA director nominee John Ratcliffe said during testimony on Capitol Hill that if confirmed, he hopes to develop offensive cyber tools and supports the creation of a cyber-specific deterrence strategy.

Ratcliffe, who served as director of national intelligence and in the House of Representatives for Texas, drew a comparison to the concerns over physical, territorial borders.

“It’s invasion through our digital borders from half a world away in a few seconds and a few keystrokes that can cause so much damage,” Ratcliffe told Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, during an Intelligence Committee hearing Wednesday on his nomination. “The deterrent effect has to be that there are consequences to our adversaries when they do that.”

Ratcliffe added his voice to those in President-elect Donald Trump’s orbit and elsewhere to ratchet up U.S. cyber offense in response to high-profile breaches like those by Chinese hackers of telecommunications companies, an idea that some experts have greeted with skepticism.

He said that as CIA director, he would seek to steer the agency to work on cyber tools that will allow the United States to retaliate against attackers.

“The deployment of those capabilities would of course be a policy decision for others to make,” he said. “But I would like to make sure we have all the tools necessary to go on offense against our adversaries in the cyber means.”

Much of what the CIA does in cyberspace is classified, but some details have emerged publicly at times. During his first term, Trump gave the CIA more freedom to conduct cyberspace operations, leading to cyberattacks on Iranian infrastructure and more, Yahoo News reported in 2020.

The Vault 7 leaks of 2017 also shed light on the CIA’s cyber tools.

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

• 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

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

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