On September 9, the FBI released its new cyber strategy.
“The FBI’s new Cyber Strategy is a roadmap for defending the American people and the nation’s critical infrastructure in cyberspace. The strategy focuses on four pillars: disrupting adversaries, supporting victims, strengthening partnerships, and building the capabilities this mission demands. Together, these four pillars bring the full weight of the FBI to defend the homeland in cyberspace and secure America’s digital future.”
With respect to “disruption,” the Executive Summary states:
FBI Cyber operates seamlessly across criminal and counterintelligence authorities, sequencing operations to apply whichever authority best disrupts the adversary at a given phase of a campaign. Joint, sequenced operations will be conducted at speed and at scale, in coordination with domestic, international, and industry partners to achieve maximum impact. Threat intelligence and access to adversary infrastructure, networks, and support ecosystems will identify the best operational opportunities. FBI Cyber employs a “best athlete” model in which the partner with the strongest authority, access, or capability leads the relevant phase of an operation, allowing multi-phased campaigns to apply sustained pressure on adversaries across jurisdictions and authorities. These operations dismantle adversary infrastructure, seize stolen cryptocurrency, disrupt nation-state intrusion campaigns, and take down pervasive ransomware variants.
The FBI’s Virtual Assets Unit integrates investigative, technical, and analytic expertise to trace and seize cryptocurrency across a broad array of FBI cases, including ransomware payments, nationstate intrusions, and the proceeds of cyber-enabled fraud schemes.
The FBI will use the full range of its authorities and support cost imposition across every instrument of national power. In support of this approach, FBI Cyber will detect shifts in adversary intent and capability, disrupt their ability to profit or operate safely, expose their tradecraft and enablers, bring offenders to justice with domestic and international partners, and provide the evidence and intelligence that underpin sanctions, diplomatic action, and partner law enforcement actions.
More details are provided in the main document.
