Democrats’ big win on Election Day, which saw them take control of both the House and Senate, has ramifications for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, artificial intelligence, surveillance policy and much more.

Here’s what lawmakers and cybersecurity experts have to say about the short-term and long-term prospects on Capitol Hill.

Leadership plans ahead

Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. is in line to take the gavel on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, with Sen. Gary Peters, Mich., retiring.

“Our government’s number one job is to keep people safe, and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee must work to ensure that our country remains safe, secure and free from all kinds of threats,” Hassan said in a statement to CyberScoop. “That work involves protecting against terrorism and fentanyl trafficking, but it also includes guarding against emerging threats like artificial intelligence security risks and strengthening our cybersecurity.”

“The Trump-Vance administration has undermined our security on these fronts, including by diverting resources away from combatting fentanyl trafficking and gutting CISA,” she continued. “We need to reverse these cuts, confront these challenges and put public safety first.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is poised to return once again as chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Democrats are taking over at a “pivotal time for CISA,” with it looking to add staff after cutting back by nearly one-third.

“First and foremost, we will aim to work with CISA to expedite its critical re-staffing effort and to ensure it has the expertise necessary to support stakeholders as they defend against the scale and velocity of AI-enabled cyber-attacks,” he said in a statement to CyberScoop. “Advances in AI can help defenders, but it will also accelerate the consequences of deferred investments in security and CISA must be well-positioned to help critical infrastructure owners and operators rapidly improve their cybersecurity posture.”

“We will prioritize getting resources straight into the hands for defenders — by extending the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program and improving support of under-resourced sectors, especially water,” he continued. “We will work to ensure CISA re-establishes its cross-sector coordination capacity, which was diminished when the Trump administration- terminated CIPAC, by making sure the Anchor-CI is eventually up and running and meets the needs of stakeholders. Finally, we will make sure CISA is well-positioned to support the secure development and deployment of AI.”

What happens in the lame-duck session

Before the GOP relinquishes control of the House and Senate to Democrats, though, there’s a lame-duck session ahead. 

Long-term renewal of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA 2015) is a bipartisan and industry priority, with it set to expire Dec. 11. Current Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has been the biggest obstacle to reauthorization, but he could get “rolled” by GOP leadership on an extension, said Michael Garcia, a former government cyber official and vice president of the cybersecurity practice at Monument Advocacy. Possible vehicles for CISA 2015 to hitch a ride include an omnibus funding bill or the annual defense policy bill.

The Department of Homeland Security, and its subagency CISA, are currently operating on a continuing resolution that’s also set to expire Dec. 11, where lawmakers could temporarily extend CISA 2015 if a long-term solution can’t be reached in the lame duck. Another continuing resolution before Dec. 11 in lieu of an omnibus spending bill is an option for the lame duck. Both a CR and omnibus spending bill would theoretically include DHS funding, although the agency’s funding has been made more difficult in the past by the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the department.

Republicans have talked about wanting to get the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act done in the lame duck. Besides the possibilities of CISA 2015 being included in the bill, Nicholas Leiserson, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for Security and Technology, said the Senate version of the legislation has a pair of very noteworthy cyber provisions: a “very broad” authorization for contractor-owned, contractor-operated offensive cyber operations, and a requirement that every artificial intelligence product sold to the Defense Department have an AI bill of materials.   

Additional leadership shuffle

While Paul is losing his gavel, he’s shown he can be a disruptive force on passing cybersecurity legislation through the Senate in the minority. That makes what he does next possibly determinative for cyber bills, Leiserson and Garcia said. “If he leaves HSGAC, let a thousand cyber bills flourish!” Garia quipped on social media. Paul could opt to become the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee instead of HSGAC.

Nebraska Sen. James Lankford would take over for Paul as top HSGAC Republican in that scenario, and an industry source said he’s viewed as a supporter of CISA 2015.

On Senate Intelligence, the panel’s leadership goes to a lawmaker who has placed a big emphasis on cybersecurity in his congressional career: Mark Warner, D-Va. 

On the House side, while Rep. Andrew Garbarino, R-N.Y., moves to the minority on the Homeland Security panel, he has proven willing to collaborate with Democrats on cybersecurity issues. Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., is poised to take the gavel of the panel’s cybersecurity subcommittee, and Rep. Vince Fong, R-of California looks set to become the subcommittee’s top Republican and has his own history of bipartisanship. Fong would replace current subcommittee chair Andy Ogles, the far-right Tennessee Republican who lost in the primaries.

One thing to watch in the House, Leiserson said, is how the House looks to tackle AI — through existing committees, a select committee or some other structure. Democrats haven’t put forward a unified front on AI guardrails yet.

With AI models uncovering as many vulnerabilities as they are, “highly capable frontier models are going to drive a lot of discussion” about AI and cybersecurity, said Craig Albright, the Business Software Alliance’s senior vice president for U.S. government relations.

Appropriations, oversight, legislation

If the NDAA or a CISA 2015 extension don’t pass in the lame duck, they’d be priorities in 2027, too.

“CISA 2015 has to happen, and if we can’t get it done, then we can’t move to the next thing,”  said Henry Young, BSA’s policy director. “Once we get it done, there’s an open question about which of these priorities that we’ve talked about gets to be number one. Is it post-quantum cryptography? Is it government IT modernization? Is it frontier AI cybersecurity systems? We don’t know that yet, and we can’t know until we pass this law.”

How damaged the agency CISA is by Trump administration’s budget cuts is something Democrats are expected to scrutinize closely. Another top budget issue is what to do with the expired State and Local Cybersecurity Grants Program housed at DHS, since even if it’s reauthorized, it will require appropriators taking steps to invest in it.

Democrats could take a look at a variety of other Trump administration changes at DHS and CISA, on topics like election security, the Cyber Safety Review Board, the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative and more. 

More broadly, Leiserson said an area of Democratic cyber oversight is likely to be the Department of Government Efficiency that cut cyber personnel at agencies at and beyond CISA, and “particularly the integrity of systems that DOGE touched when they were given very high privileged access to federal systems.”

If the White House puts forward a permanent nominee for director of CISA, Democrats would be poised to vet that person. They also would have a say in who leads the Office of the National Cyber Director, should the incumbent, Sean Cairncross, depart.

So far, Democrats haven’t put forward a unified posture on expired surveillance authorities known as Section 702, although both Warner and incoming House Intelligence Chairman Jim Himes, D-Conn., have fought in the past for its renewal. The surveillance program is operating similarly still due to a court order, but that order only lasts through next spring.

The post What Democratic control of Congress means for cybersecurity appeared first on CyberScoop.

A Delaware-based defense and aerospace company has settled a case with U.S. agencies over government allegations that the firm neglected its cybersecurity obligations in its contracts.

ILC — the name the government uses to collectively refer to ILC Dover and ILC Astrospace — agreed to pay $13 million to resolve the False Claims Act allegations involving its contracts with the Department of the Army, Missile Defense Agency and National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

ILC, according to the government, submitted false or fraudulent claims for payment on contracts with the agencies because it knew it hadn’t complied with the contracts’ cybersecurity requirements over a period between 2018 and 2024.

For instance, ILC allegedly used a third-party company to store sensitive data in the cloud without proper safeguards, and didn’t develop and update mandated security plans for each of its covered information systems.

“The best response to cyberattacks is to prevent them from happening in the first place,” Benjamin Wallace, U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, said in a news release Tuesday. “The obligations that ILC violated exist to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the United States’ technical innovation.” 

American industrial manufacturing giant Ingersoll Rand, the parent company of ILC Dover, said it inherited the issue when it purchased the firm.

“We became aware of this matter following our acquisition of ILC Dover in June 2024, took prompt action to address the identified issues, and were in compliance with applicable requirements by October 2024,” said Sara Hasell, a spokesperson for Ingersoll Rand. “We have agreed to resolve this matter with the U.S. Department of Justice without an admission of liability and remain committed to maintaining strong cybersecurity practices.”

The $13 million settlement is one of the bigger settlements since the Justice Department began using the False Claims Act in 2022 to penalize contractors over cybersecurity shortcomings. The False Claims Act is a Civil War-era law passed to deal with fraudulent contractors.

“To protect sensitive information from cyber threats, defense and aerospace contractors must comply with the cybersecurity requirements in their federal contracts and subcontracts,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. 

Under the law, a private citizen can raise allegations that the contractor defrauded the government and is entitled to receive a portion of any settlement. The whistleblower in the ILC case, Philip Root, the company’s former director of cybersecurity, will receive $2.35 million.

Government contract attorneys say that a forthcoming regulatory overhaul could expose more companies to False Claims Act punishments.

The post Defense and aerospace firm settles with government over allegedly failing to meet cybersecurity contract requirements appeared first on CyberScoop.

A joint international law enforcement and industry operation against scammers netted 28 arrests, rescued 117 trafficking victims and led to the takedown of more than 3.7 million accounts, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

The crackdown, billed as “Joint Disruption Week,” focused on West Africa and also identified more than $11 million in freezable funds and led to the seizure of hundreds of electronic devices. The range of scams involved included law enforcement impersonation scams, digital arrest extortion schemes, pig butchering and other online fraud operations targeting victims around the world.

Participants heralded it as the largest joint scam operation to date, and the first focused on West Africa.

“For so long, the problem of international scams seemed impossible to tackle,” Kelly Milliron, acting chief of staff and counselor to the Assistant Attorney General leading the Criminal Division, told reporters. “But now, because of collaborations like Joint Disruption Week, we have a plan, a consolidated approach, bringing together people that can bring solutions and, most of all, safety for our citizens.”

It’s the latest effort in the Trump administration’s ongoing bid to make countering scam operations a theme of his term, and to make disrupting cyber adversaries and criminals a central focus of its cyber strategy. 

Participating agencies in the London-hosted operation beyond the Justice Department were the Scam Center Strike Force under the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Treasury Department, Homeland Security Investigations, the Homeland Security Task Force, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, the Nigerian Joint Case Team on Cybercrimes, the Nigeria Police Force’s National Cybercrime Center and the Ghanaian Cyber Security Authority, INTERPOL and agencies from Australia, Canada, India and New Zealand also were involved. 

Adobe, Binance, Coinbase, Cyjax, Elliptic, Chainalysis, Flashpoint, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Silent Push, Starlink and TRM Labs were companies that participated in the operation. Meta said it removed more than 3.7 million accounts, groups and pages from Facebook and Instagram based in West Africa, a majority of which targeted people in the United States and United Kingdom.

Some on Capitol Hill have raised concerns about whether U.S. operations to counter scams are coordinated enough.

The operation actually began in September, with a series of raids in Ghana before last week’s designated action. Jeanine Pirro, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said Disruption Week occurred not long after a new partnership with the United Kingdom.

“The aim is to bring cases in parallel and also to combat fraud together through joint targeting,” she said. “This was the perfect time to continue that partnership.”

It’s not clear how many of the potentially freezable funds will actually be frozen as a result of the operation.

“Identifying the assets is the easy part, and tracing them, going after and developing probable cause within our investigations so that we can legally seize them does require a little bit of work,” said Matthew Floyd, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “So at this point, that’s why it’s much easier in these efforts to identify assets initially, and then they’ll fold into our investigations as we move forward.”

Disruption Week was the culmination of agencies meeting to combine forces, something that will happen on a regular basis, Floyd said, but at an interval to be determined going forward. The operation led to the sharing of more than 30 leads on scam centers, participants said.

The post West African scammers targeted in joint international government-industry operation appeared first on CyberScoop.

Authorities extradited a 36-year-old Russian national from the Republic of Georgia under accusations of widespread bank-account takeover attacks, including a scheme to defraud two banks of more than $6.3 million, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Sergei Anatolyevich Filimonov and unnamed co-conspirators ran an extensive operation starting in November 2023 to spoof domains of banks, obtain credentials of legitimate customers and use those details to steal money from accounts with large balances, according to court records. 

Filimonov and his co-conspirators allegedly collected more than 5,000 victim login credentials to various banks, including those assigned to employees with access to a company headquartered in Atlanta and another business with offices in Cumming, Ga.

Authorities said Filimonov and his co-conspirators registered and maintained spoofed domains of banks, purchased sponsored links to direct unsuspecting victims to those domains, and stole credentials from those banks’ customers when they attempted to log into the fraudulent sites.

The alleged bank-account takeover crew also created infrastructure to store victim login credentials and tricked victims into providing additional details to bypass security controls.

Prosecutors said Filimonov and his co-conspirators caused and attempted to cause the unauthorized transfer of nearly $5.58 million from one unnamed bank in June 2024 and $735,000 from another bank in November 2024. Both banks have local branches in the Northern District of Georgia and maintain headquarters in North Carolina, according to the indictment. 

Officials previously seized the domain, which the co-conspirators allegedly used to store credentials harvested from the spoofed banking sites in December 2025. The FBI at the time said it identified at least 19 victims in the U.S. linked to the domain and put total attempted losses at about $28 million, including confirmed losses of about $14.6 million. 

Filimonov is charged with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, access device fraud conspiracy, multiple counts of bank and wire fraud, possession of unauthorized access devices and aggravated identity theft. He faces up to 175 years in prison. 

He pleaded not guilty Sept. 4 and remains detained in the Northern District of Georgia.

The post Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme appeared first on CyberScoop.

Apollo Global Management confirmed it was among several financial institutions impacted by a string of social engineering attacks that hit the sector last month, the company said Friday. 

Attackers gained unauthorized access to some of the private equity firm’s cloud platforms between July 6 and July 10, the company said in a data breach notification filed in California. Apollo did not say when or how it became aware of the intrusion and did not respond to a request for comment.

Apollo is the first victim to formally disclose that sensitive personal data under its care was compromised by a wave of attacks that have hit large private equity firms, law firms, financial rating agencies and medical technology companies. 

The company did not name the group responsible for the attack. Yet, Google earlier this month attributed the ongoing campaign to BlackFile, a threat group affiliated with The Com, that recently split its extortion operations across four brands with shared infrastructure: Redact, Pink, Helix and Falcon. 

“Upon detecting the incident, we promptly notified law enforcement, engaged leading outside cybersecurity and forensic experts, enhanced our security protocols, and launched an investigation,” Matthew Breitfelder, global head of human capital at Apollo, wrote in the disclosure notice. 

As part of its ongoing investigation, Apollo said it determined on Aug. 12 that personal data including names, dates of birth, contact information, home addresses and Social Security numbers were compromised. The company did not say how many people were impacted, but noted it’s thus far found no evidence any data was posted online or used for identity theft or fraud.

Apollo is one of the world’s largest private equity firms, with $1.05 trillion in assets under its management at the end of June, according to a regulatory filing.

Researchers previously told CyberScoop some of Apollo’s largest competitors, including Blackstone and Bain Capital, were also targeted with malicious infrastructure, but it’s unclear if those firms were compromised.

BlackFile and its various affiliates have impacted organizations in multiple industries, including healthcare, technology, transportation, logistics, wholesale, and retail and hospitality since the beginning of this year.

The extortion group shifts from one sector to the next, impersonating IT support in voice-phishing and social-engineering attacks before threatening its alleged victims with extortion demands, which often start around $3 million and are typically negotiated down to less than $1 million.

Google researchers also previously said some of the group’s recent victims have been subject to threatening messages and other forms of escalation, including swatting incidents, a tactic adopted by several subsets of The Com.

The post Apollo discloses data breach from ongoing wave of attacks hitting financial sector appeared first on CyberScoop.

A cybercrime group responsible for a string of recent attacks against private equity firms, law firms and financial rating agencies remains active and continued to target new victims as of late last week, according to researchers.

BlackFile, which Google Threat Intelligence Group tracks as UNC6671 and associates more broadly with The Com, has been active since the start of the year, shifting its focus from one sector to the next. 

“We have seen continued targeting against the financial sector with additional targeting of other organizations including in the med tech space,” Austin Larsen, principal threat analyst at GTIG, told CyberScoop.

The extortion group impersonates IT support in voice-phishing and social engineering attacks, and recently split its extortion operations across four brands with shared infrastructure: Redact, Pink, Helix and Falcon.

Several organizations received new extortion demands from Redact in the last week, according to Google. 

BlackFile and its various affiliates have impacted organizations in multiple industries, including healthcare, technology, transportation, logistics, wholesale, retail and hospitality.

“BlackFile does go after some of the largest organizations in the sectors that they go for. They’re not going after small companies,” Larsen said. “This is big-game hunting.”

The group’s extortion demands often start around $3 million and payments, including several in the past few weeks, have typically been negotiated down to less than $1 million, according to Google.

Flashpoint researchers told CyberScoop they have observed malicious infrastructure targeting Blackstone, Bain Capital, Moody’s, CME and Apollo, but it’s unclear if any of those firms were compromised. 

BlackFile’s steady pace of activity underscores the persistent threat it poses, as it targets an average of 1.5 new victims daily, researchers said.

Some of the group’s recent victims have been subject to threatening messages and other forms of escalation, including swatting incidents, a tactic adopted by several subsets of The Com, according to Google. 

The attackers use hundreds of callers, often lower-level people that are recruited for a small fee or an opportunity to earn goodwill with the group, who make the voice phishing calls to obtain initial access. Larsen estimates less than a dozen core operators run the different brands under the BlackFile umbrella.

“From the intrusion data that we’re seeing, this does appear to be essentially the same group,” he said, adding that different people may be operating the various brands, but they’re all linked back to the same threat cluster using shared infrastructure.

Mandiant incident responders encounter BlackFile often, having been engaged by more than two dozen organizations successfully compromised by the threat group since January. New victims in the financial sector were calling Mandiant in for help earlier this month.

Voice-based phishing attacks for data theft extortion aren’t sophisticated or novel, but BlackFile and other cybercrime groups consistently prove their continued effectiveness across virtually any sector or organization. “They’re really hitting on the human weakness element here,” Larsen said.

The post Details emerge on BlackFile’s recent attacks on financial companies appeared first on CyberScoop.

The Treasury Department is slapping sanctions on First VPN and its administrator for allegedly selling services to ransomware operators, as well as another person aiding ransomware gangs.

First VPN Services, or 1VPNS, was “deeply embedded in the cybercriminal ecosystem” and appeared in virtually every Europol investigation in recent years, the law enforcement body said after a sting targeting the service in May.

Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned 1VPNS as well as its alleged administrator, Ukrainian citizen Dmytro Rashevskyi, Monday in conjunction with the United Kingdom. The outfit provided anonymity services that could be legitimate in some instances, but 1VPNS advertised itself in online cybercrime forums for more than a decade, touting its refusal to cooperate with law enforcement, the office said.

“Numerous ransomware groups have purchased infrastructure from 1VPNS, which they have leveraged in attacks on U.S. companies and institutions — including to hide the origins of their attacks, deploy malware, and manage exfiltrated data,” OFAC said. “Victims of ransomware attacks that involved the use of 1VPNS infrastructure have included U.S. businesses, financial services companies, hospitals, and municipal governments.”

Treasury also sanctioned Belarus national Yegeniy Vladimirovich Silayev for allegedly selling “cryptors,” tools used to disguise ransomware and other malware, to ransomware operators.

“Unlike legitimate encryption tools, which are designed to protect data and the privacy of the people that own it, cryptors are built specifically to make malware stealthier and more effective by disguising it as harmless files,” OFAC said.

Treasury’s sanctions designations dovetail with separate, unrelated cyber sanctions that European governments from Monday. The FBI has previously issued an alert about First VPN Service. 

Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs said it has seen 1VPNS selling its services to ransomware operators for prices ranging from $723 for Anubis to $58 Sinobi.

“The amounts are small because infrastructure subscriptions are small,” Ari Redbord, global head of policy and government affairs for the company, wrote on LinkedIn. “A named ransomware group paying a named enabler on public chains still leaves a trail investigators can follow after the fact.”

Victims tied to First VPN Service infrastructure include U.S. municipalities, hospitals and financial services companies.

Europol said it had arrested the administrator of 1VPNS in its May sting, but did not name them. 

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a question about whether its sanctions targeted that same arrested person.

The post Treasury sanctions First VPN Service, others for abetting ransomware gangs appeared first on CyberScoop.