US Agency Warns Employees About Phone Use Amid Ongoing China Hack (msn.com) 8
A federal agency has issued a directive to employees to reduce the use of their phones for work matters due to China's recent hack of U.S. telecommunications infrastructure, WSJ reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: In an email to staff sent Thursday, the chief information officer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned that internal and external work-related meetings and conversations that involve nonpublic data should only be held on platforms like Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx and not on work-issued or personal phones.
"Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages," the email said, while referencing a recent government statement acknowledging the telecommunications infrastructure attack. "While there is no evidence that CFPB has been targeted by this unauthorized access, I ask for your compliance with these directives so we reduce the risk that we will be compromised," said the email, which was sent to all CFPB employees and contractors. It wasn't clear if other federal agencies had taken similar measures or were planning to, but many U.S. officials have already curtailed their phone use due to the hack, according to a former official.
"Do NOT conduct CFPB work using mobile voice calls or text messages," the email said, while referencing a recent government statement acknowledging the telecommunications infrastructure attack. "While there is no evidence that CFPB has been targeted by this unauthorized access, I ask for your compliance with these directives so we reduce the risk that we will be compromised," said the email, which was sent to all CFPB employees and contractors. It wasn't clear if other federal agencies had taken similar measures or were planning to, but many U.S. officials have already curtailed their phone use due to the hack, according to a former official.
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Bonafide link? (Score:1)
Does anyone have a link to a actual federal website with this warning that I can reference?
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When we consider Teams the most secure form of communication then we must be truly fucked. Just use Microsoft... WTF?
Or Cisco, the backdoor to all TLA in the US?
Microsoft Is the Bestest at Securing Federal Data (Score:1)
Hacks:
April/China: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2024/... [dhs.gov]
August/Russia: https://www.axios.com/2024/04/... [axios.com]
How Microsoft took this criticism to heart:
https://apnews.com/article/mic... [apnews.com]
I guess when you have the lock on the market, it's a good thing you're so honest and forthright, fix bugs almost immediately, and don't let foreign threat actors access US government agency data. Unfortunately, other than that lock on the market, Microsoft is none of those.