Despite hacking charges, U.S. tech industry fought to keep ties to Russia spy service

As U.S. officials investigated in January the FSB's alleged role in election cyber attacks, U.S. technology firms were quietly lobbying the government to soften a ban on dealing with the Russian spy agency, people with direct knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

New U.S. sanctions put in place by former President Barack Obama last December - part of a broad suite of actions taken in response to Russia's alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election - had made it a crime for American companies to have any business relationship with the FSB, or Federal Security Service.

U.S. authorities had accused the FSB, along with the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, of orchestrating cyber attacks on the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a charge Moscow denies.

But the sanctions also threatened to imperil the Russian sales operations of Western tech companies. Under a little-understood arrangement, the FSB doubles as a regulator charged with approving the import to Russia of almost all technology that contains encryption, which is used in both sophisticated hardware as well as products like cellphones and laptops.

Worried about the sales impact, business industry groups, including the U.S.-Russia Business Council and the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, contacted U.S. officials at the American embassy in Moscow and the Treasury, State and Commerce departments, according to five people with direct knowledge of the lobbying effort.

The campaign, which began in January and proved successful in a matter of weeks, has not been previously reported.

In recent years, Western technology companies have acceded to increasing demands by Moscow for access to closely guarded product security secrets, including source code, Reuters reported last week.[nL1N1JK1ZF] Russia's information technology market is expected to reach $18.4 billion this year, according to market researcher International Data Corporation.

The sanctions would have meant the Russian market was "dead for U.S. electronics” said Alexis Rodzianko, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia, who argued against the new restrictions. “Every second Russian has an iPhone, iPad, so they would all switch to Samsungs," he said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Commerce Department Bureau of Industry and Security declined to comment. A State Department official said Washington considered a range of factors before amending the FSB sanction and regularly works with U.S. companies to assess the impact of such policies.

The lobbyists argued the sanction could have stopped the sale of cars, medical devices and heavy equipment, all of which also often contain encrypted software, according to a person involved in the lobbying effort. The goal of the sanctions was to sever U.S. business dealings with the FSB - not end American technology exports to Russia entirely, the industry groups argued.

“The sanction was against a government agency that has many functions, only one of them being hacking the U.S. elections,” said Rodzianko.

The lobbyists assembled representatives from the tech, automotive and manufacturing sectors to make the case to the U.S. Treasury Department, said the person involved in the lobbying effort.

The industry groups did not argue against the intent of the sanction but asked for a narrow exception that would allow them to continue to seek regulatory approvals from the FSB while still keeping in place the broader ban on doing business with the spy agency.

"PUNISHMENT FOR VERY BAD ACTS"  

The industry groups represent a number of technology firms with a large presence in Russia, including Cisco and Microsoft.

Reuters was unable to determine which companies were directly involved in the lobbying. Microsoft said it did not ask for changes to the sanctions. In a statement, Cisco said it also did not seek any changes to the sanction but had asked the Treasury Department for clarification on how it applied.

In order to get encrypted technology into Russia, companies need to obtain the blessing of the FSB, a process that can sometimes take months or even years of negotiation. Before granting that approval, the agency can demand sensitive security data about the product, including source code - instructions that control the basic operations of computer equipment.

The United States has accused Russia of a growing number of cyber attacks against the West. U.S. officials say they are concerned that Moscow’s reviews of product secrets could be used to find vulnerabilities to hack into the products.

Some U.S. government officials rejected the industry groups' arguments. They openly embraced the prospect of any ripple effect that cut further trade with Russia.

Kevin Wolf was assistant secretary at the Commerce Department and oversaw export control policy when the FSB sanction was put in place. Wolf said within days of the sanction taking effect, Commerce received numerous calls from industry groups and companies warning of the unintended consequences.

But for Wolf, who was "furious" with Moscow over the alleged cyber attacks, any additional curbs on trade with Russia was a bonus rather than an unintended downside.

"I said, 'Great, terrific, fuck 'em ... The whole point is to interfere with trade'," recounted Wolf. “The sanction was meant to impose pain (on Russia) and send a signal as punishment for very bad acts."

Wolf left the Commerce Department when President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20.

Other officials felt that the impact on legitimate trade was too great. “The intention of the sanction was not to cut off tech trade with Russia,” said a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the process.

The lobbyists had also argued that since the sanctions only applied to U.S. technology makers, it would put them at a disadvantage to European and Asian companies who would still be able to interact with the FSB and sell products in Russia.

"We were asking for a narrow technical fix that would give a fair deal for American companies," Dan Russell, CEO of the U.S.-Russia Business Council, said in an interview.

The advocacy worked. State and Treasury officials began working to tweak the sanction in January before Obama left office, according to people involved in the process.

On Feb. 2, the Treasury Department created an exception to the sanction, about two weeks after Trump took office, to allow tech companies to continue to obtain approvals from the FSB.

Source: Reuters

New computer virus spreads from Ukraine to disrupt world business

REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

A new cyber virus spread from Ukraine to wreak havoc around the globe on Wednesday, crippling thousands of computers, disrupting ports from Mumbai to Los Angeles and halting production at a chocolate factory in Australia.

The virus is believed to have first taken hold on Tuesday in Ukraine where it silently infected computers after users downloaded a popular tax accounting package or visited a local news site, national police and international cyber experts said.

More than a day after it first struck, companies around the world were still wrestling with the fallout while cyber security experts scrambled to find a way to stem the spread.

Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) said it was struggling to process orders and shift cargoes, congesting some of the 76 ports around the world run by its APM Terminals subsidiary.

U.S. delivery firm FedEx Corp (FDX.N) said its TNT Express division had been significantly affected by the virus, which also wormed its way into South America, affecting ports in Argentina operated by China's Cofco.

The malicious code locked machines and demanded victims post a ransom worth $300 in bitcoins or lose their data entirely, similar to the extortion tactic used in the global WannaCry ransomware attack in May.

More than 30 victims paid up but security experts are questioning whether extortion was the goal, given the relatively small sum demanded, or whether the hackers were driven by destructive motives rather than financial gain.

Hackers asked victims to notify them by email when ransoms had been paid but German email provider Posteo quickly shut down the address, a German government cyber security official said.

Ukraine, the epicenter of the cyber strike, has repeatedly accused Russia of orchestrating attacks on its computer systems and critical power infrastructure since its powerful neighbor annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in 2014.

The Kremlin, which has consistently rejected the accusations, said on Wednesday it had no information about the origin of the global cyber attack, which also struck Russian companies such as oil giant Rosneft (ROSN.MM) and a steelmaker.

"No one can effectively combat cyber threats on their own, and, unfortunately, unfounded blanket accusations will not solve this problem," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

ESET, a Slovakian company that sells products to shield computers from viruses, said 80 percent of the infections detected among its global customer base were in Ukraine, with Italy second hardest hit with about 10 percent.

ETERNAL BLUE

The aim of the latest attack appeared to be disruption rather than ransom, said Brian Lord, former deputy director of intelligence and cyber operations at Britain's GCHQ and now managing director at private security firm PGI Cyber.

"My sense is this starts to look like a state operating through a proxy ... as a kind of experiment to see what happens," Lord told Reuters on Wednesday.

While the malware seemed to be a variant of past campaigns, derived from code known as Eternal Blue believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), experts said it was not as virulent as May's WannaCry attack.

Security researchers said Tuesday's virus could leap from computer to computer once unleashed within an organization but, unlike WannaCry, it could not randomly trawl the internet for its next victims, limiting its scope to infect.

Bushiness that installed Microsoft's (MSFT.O) latest security patches from earlier this year and turned off Windows file-sharing features appeared to be largely unaffected.

There was speculation, however, among some experts that once the new virus had infected one computer it could spread to other machines on the same network, even if those devices had received a security update.

After WannaCry, governments, security firms and industrial groups advised businesses and consumers to make sure all their computers were updated with Microsoft (MSFT.O) security patches.

Austria's government-backed Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said "a small number" of international firms appeared to be affected, with tens of thousands of computers taken down.

Security firms including Microsoft, Cisco's (CSCO.O) Talos and Symantec (SYMC.O) said they had confirmed some of the initial infections occurred when malware was transmitted to users of a Ukrainian tax software program called MEDoc.

The supplier of the software, M.E.Doc denied in a post on Facebook that its software was to blame, though Microsoft reiterated its suspicions afterwards.

"Microsoft now has evidence that a few active infections of the ransomware initially started from the legitimate MEDoc updater process," it said in a technical blog post.

CORPORATE CHAOS

A number of the international firms hit have operations in Ukraine, and the virus is believed to have spread within global corporate networks after gaining traction within the country.

Shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk (MAERSKb.CO), which handles one in seven containers shipped worldwide, has a logistics unit in Ukraine.

Other large firms affected, such as French construction materials company Saint Gobain (SGOB.PA) and Mondelez International Inc (MDLZ.O), which owns chocolate brand Cadbury, also have operations in the country.

Maersk was one of the first global firms to be taken down by the cyber attack and its operations at major ports such as Mumbai in India, Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Los Angeles on the U.S. west coast were disrupted.

Other companies to succumb included BNP Paribas Real Estate (BNPP.PA), a part of the French bank that provides property and investment management services.

"The international cyber attack hit our non-bank subsidiary, Real Estate. The necessary measures have been taken to rapidly contain the attack," the bank said on Wednesday.

Production at the Cadbury factory on the Australian island state of Tasmania ground to a halt late on Tuesday after computer systems went down.

Russia's Rosneft, one of the world's biggest crude producers by volume, said on Tuesday its systems had suffered "serious consequences" but oil production had not been affected because it switched to backup systems.

Source: Reuters

As attacks grow, EU mulls banking stress tests for cyber risks

The European Union is considering testing banks' defenses against cyber attacks, EU officials and sources said, as concerns grow about the industry's vulnerability to hacking.

Cyber attacks against banks have increased in numbers and sophistication in recent years, with criminals finding new ways to target banks beyond trying to illicitly obtain details of their customers' online accounts. Last February $81 million was taken from the Bangladesh central bank when hackers broke into its system and gained access to the SWIFT international transactions network.

Global regulators have tightened security requirements for banks after that giant cyber fraud, one of the biggest in history, and in some countries have carried out checks on lenders' security systems.

But complex cyber attacks have kept rising, as revealed in November by SWIFT in a letter to client banks and by the theft of 2.5 million pounds ($3 million) from Tesco Plc's banking arm in the first mass hacking of accounts at a Western lender.

Banks "are struggling to demonstrate their ability to cope with the rising threat of intruders gaining unauthorized access to their critical systems and data," a report of the European Banking Authority (EBA) warned in December.

The next step from European regulators to boost security could be an EU-wide stress test.

The European executive commission is assessing additional initiatives to counter cyber attacks, a commission official told Reuters. "These include cyber-threat information sharing or penetration and resilience testing of systems."

The European Central Bank announced last year it would set up a database to register incidents of cyber crime at commercial banks in the 19-country euro zone. But exchanges of information among national authorities on cyber incidents remains scant.

The Commission is studying whether EU-wide tests would help step up security, a source at the EU executive said. This would be in addition to controls already carried out by national authorities.

EBA, which is in charge of stress-testing the bloc's banks, is expected to detail in summer the checks it intends to conduct in the next exercise planned in mid 2018.

EBA tests banks' capital cushions and can conduct checks on specific issues. Last year it monitored risks caused by fines, as EU lenders faced sanctions from U.S. regulators.

An EBA official said cyber security was on the agency's radar but no decision had been made on a possible stress test. The body's chairman, Andrea Enria, has urged EU states to stress-test their financial institutions for cyber risks.

Lloyds Banking Group is working with law enforcement agencies to trace who was behind a cyber attack that caused intermittent outages for customers of its personal banking websites almost two weeks ago, according to a source familiar with the incident. Lloyds said it would not speculate on the cause of the attack. No customers suffered any losses.

BLOCKCHAIN

As European banks keep relying on digital infrastructure that is "rigid and outdated", according to EBA, regulators are considering new technologies that could boost security.

Blockchain, the technology behind the most successful virtual currency, Bitcoin, is being closely monitored in Brussels "to establish the advantages and possible risks" but also to weigh possible moves to enable blockchain where it is hindered, the Commission source said.

More than 1 billion euros have been invested in blockchain startups, a World Economic Forum report said.

The EU agency for network and information security (ENISA) said in a report last week the technology offered new opportunities and could cut costs, but may also pose new cyber security challenges, mostly caused by its decentralized network.

Source: Reuters

When does hacking become Russian disinformation?

During the Cold War, the Soviet KGB coined the term “desinformatsiya,” or disinformation, which the CIA defined as "false, incomplete or misleading information" fed to various targets. Both the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in the same game, though the Russians played it far more vigorously.

In the digital age, the players might not have to go to the trouble of altering information, or mixing true information with false. Simply hacking into sensitive emails or other data, even when the information is true, can have the same impact as disinformation.

Witness WikiLeaks’ release of a steady flow of emails the group asserts are from John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and former counselor to President Barack Obama. Though the Clinton campaign has not verified that the hacked material is authentic, much of it rings true as inside baseball, the kind of back and forth that political campaign staffers engage in as they plan strategy.    

So far at least, none of the Podesta leaks have produced a smoking gun or looks to have had much impact on the campaign. None of it would be too exciting in a normal presidential election cycle.

But White House officials say the leaks have come from Russia, which makes it serious business. If true, at a minimum it means that Moscow may be trying to undermine the integrity of the U.S. electoral process by creating controversy and confusion. More sinister, the Russians may be attempting to embarrass Clinton or help her opponent, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.  

Among the latest WikiLeaks dump is a list of almost 40 elected officials, corporate and military leaders, whom Clinton supposedly considered as a possible vice-presidential running mate, among them Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple, Labor Secretary Tom Perez and both Bill and Melinda Gates. A Clinton campaign spokesman would not comment directly on the content of the leaked emails, but said they were an attempt by Russia "to steal private campaign documents in order to influence an election."  

The KGB has a long history of what it called "active measures" designed to rattle the West -- and the United States in particular. Disinformation was one of those weapons. Apparently, the KGB's successor spy agencies could still be in the same business.

In years past, Soviet disinformation campaigns often planted false articles in target countries, or leaked bogus information to friendly reporters or columnists in various countries, in the hope that what they wrote would be picked up by mainstream publications unaware that Moscow was the source.

At the height of the Cold War, a clandestine tunnel in Berlin led to a classic case of Soviet disinformation. The CIA and the British had dug a secret tunnel from West Berlin to East Berlin in 1955. Code-named Operation Gold, they planned to use it to wiretap all Soviet and East German communications. After the British traitor George Blake betrayed the scheme, however, the Russians decided to let it go on for a year as a source of disinformation. Dozens of CIA translators were kept busy in Washington sifting through the intercepts, some of which were misleading and others real.

KGB's Service A was devoted full time to cooking up misinformation often mixed in with the truth. A favorite KGB technique was using forged documents to spread confusion and political trouble in the West. The Kremlin's forgers were said to have the real letterhead stationery of many U.S. and European officials and agencies.

One example of Moscow's handiwork came in 1976, when the KGB pretended to celebrate America's bicentennial by publishing a slick booklet titled America's 200 Years. The booklet was designed,  British intelligence expert Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, former KGB London chief, wrote in their book Instructions From the Centre, "using broadly based factual material" to emphasize America's "acute social problems," including its treatment of minorities. It was supposedly printed and distributed by something called the European Bicentennial Committee, which had been invented by the KGB's First Chief Directorate, its foreign intelligence arm.

By 1983, the KGB was focused on sabotaging President Ronald Reagan's re-election chances. They sought to block the fierce anticommunist through a series of forgeries.  

Another objective was to stir up trouble for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. One scheme, according to Andrew and Gordievsky, involved a fabricated letter from Reagan to the king of Spain, intended to increase opposition within that nation against joining NATO. The KGB plot was exposed and failed.

Three years later, the KGB sent out a forged letter from an official in the United States Information Agency to Senator David Durenberger, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the letter, the official described a plan to take advantage of the recent Chernobyl nuclear power-plant disaster to embarrass the Soviet Union.

In the 2016 presidential contest, there may be more crosscurrents at work than just Moscow's desire to muddle the U.S. election in support of Trump.

Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, has made it clear that he intensely dislikes Clinton. He has declared that she would likely "push the United States into endless, stupid wars ... she certainly should not become president of the United States."

It also is clear that Assange believes a President Clinton would pressure the British to extradite him to the United States to face espionage charges for revealing U.S. secrets. Assange is already in a precarious position because he is holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. He took refuge there in 2012, rather than face questioning about allegations of sexual molestation and rape in Sweden.        

Before the Democratic convention, WikiLeaks released documents and emails from the Democratic National Committee that discussed ways to undermine Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic primaries. That led to the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz just as the Democratic convention was starting.  

Early in October, Assange promised more information about Clinton, which he called an "October surprise" that would destroy her candidacy. But, so far at least, the Podesta emails have certainly not done that. Nor have the WikiLeaks transcripts of excerpts of Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank.

On October 18, Ecuador announced it cut off Assange's Internet access. The Latin American nation made clear it acted to avoid entanglement in the U.S. election. Ecuador said it "does not interfere in the electoral processes in support of any candidate in particular."

During the second debate, on October 9, Clinton charged that Russian hackers were trying to influence the election through WikiLeaks. “Our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning [President Vladimir] Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks,” she said.  “… And WikiLeaks is part of that ... we don't even know if it's accurate information, and then they put it out.”

Clinton continued: "We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election. And believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump."

In the final presidential debate, Clinton argued that Trump, if elected, would be a "puppet" of Putin. It appeared to rattle the Republican nominee. "No puppet," Trump insisted. "No puppet. You're the puppet." He declined to criticize Putin, who he said had "no respect" for Clinton.    

Given the history of Russian disinformation campaigns, and its hacking in the digital age, it would appear that Moscow is an equal-opportunity meddler in the U.S. election process. It did its best to undermine Reagan, a Republican icon, by painting him as a war-monger. Now, with an assist from WikiLeaks, it is trying to embarrass Clinton, the Democratic nominee who is ahead in many polls.

Small wonder that weary voters from both major parties appear to agree on one thing: A universal relief that the bizarre 2016 election — with the obscene language on a leaked Trump tape, women coming forward to accuse Trump of groping them, the FBI’s investigation into Clinton's email server and so much more — is almost over.

Source: David Wise

Senators accuse Yahoo of 'unacceptable' delay in hack discovery

Six senators on Tuesday demanded that Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) explain why hackers' theft of user information for 500 million accounts two years ago came to light only last week and called the company's handling of the breach "unacceptable."

The lawmakers, all Democrats, said they were "disturbed" that the 2014 intrusion, which was disclosed by the company on Thursday, was detected so long after it occurred.

"That means millions of Americans’ data may have been compromised for two years," the senators wrote in a letter to Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer. "This is unacceptable."

A Yahoo spokesman said the company would respond in a "timely and appropriate manner" to the letter, which was signed by Senators Patrick Leahy, Al Franken, Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, Ron Wyden and Edward Markey.

The top U.S. stock market regulator said separately that prompt disclosure by companies of "cyber events" is a priority. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, asked about Yahoo, said she could not comment specifically on it.

She earlier said at a conference that SEC examiners in recent months have been checking that companies comply with 2011 agency guidance stressing the need to disclose hacks.

Yahoo has faced mounting questions about exactly when it knew about the 2014 cyber attack that exposed the email credentials of users, a critical issue for the company as it seeks to prevent the breach from affecting a pending takeover of its core business by Verizon Inc (VZ.N).

The internet firm has said it detected the breach this summer after conducting a security review prompted by an unrelated hacking claim that turned out to be meritless. Yahoo has not given a precise timeline explaining when it was made aware of the 2014 attack, or if it knew of the breach before announcing the deal with Verizon in late July.

In a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said her agency supported quick disclosures although she declined to say if the FTC was investigating Yahoo.

"In our view, approximately 30 to 60 days (after a breach is discovered) might be appropriate," she told the Senate Commerce Committee. "It is necessary for consumers to be notified so they can take appropriate steps to protect themselves."

In their letter, the senators requested Yahoo brief them on the company's investigation, cooperation with authorities and plans to protect affected users.

The senators asked Mayer for a timeline of the hack and discovery as well as Yahoo's steps to prevent another breach.

Yahoo's shares closed up 2.5 percent at $43.37 each in a broadly bullish market on Tuesday.

The letter came a day after Democratic Senator Mark Warner asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Yahoo and its senior executives fulfilled obligations to inform investors and the public about the hacking attack, which Yahoo has blamed on a "state-sponsored actor."

Source: Reuters

Hackers steal millions of Minecraft passwords

Lifeboat lets members run servers for customised, multiplayer maps for the smartphone edition of Minecraft.

There is evidence that the stolen information, including email addresses and passwords, is being offered on sites that trade in hacked data.

Analysis suggests passwords were very weakly protected so attackers could easily work them out.

Minimise damage

Information about the breach was passed to independent security expert Troy Hunt who said he got the list from someone who trades in stolen credentials. Several people had told him the data was circulating on dark net sites.

Mr Hunt said the data was stolen in early 2015 but the breach has only now come to light.

Passwords for Lifeboat accounts were hashed, he said, but the algorithm used provided little protection.

Hashing is a technique used to scramble passwords so they are not easily read if the data goes astray.

Often, he said, a Google search for a hashed password would instantly return the correct plain text value. Well-known cracking tools could automate and speed up this process, he said.

"A large portion of those passwords would be reverted to plain text in a very short time," he said in a blogpost about the breach.

This often lead to other security problems, he said, because many people re-use passwords so finding out one can lead attackers to compromise accounts on other sites.

In a statement given to Motherboard, Lifeboat said it had taken action to limit the damage.

"When this happened [in] early January we figured the best thing for our players was to quietly force a password reset without letting the hackers know they had limited time to act," it told the news site adding that it now used stronger hashing algorithms.

It said: "We have not received any reports of anyone being damaged by this."

Mr Hunt was critical of the company for "quietly" forcing the password re-set saying this policy left him "speechless".

Instead, he said, Lifeboat should have done much more to alert users so they could quickly change passwords if they used the same one on other sites.

"The first thing that should be on any company's mind after an incident like this is, 'How do we minimise the damage to our users?'" he said.

Source: BBC

US Supreme Court approves expanded hacking powers

Previously, magistrate judges could order searches only within the jurisdiction of their court, often limited to a few counties.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) said the change was necessary to modernise the law for the digital age.

But digital rights groups say the move expands the FBI's hacking authority.

The DoJ wants judges to be able to issue remote search warrants for computers located anywhere that the United States claims jurisdiction, which could include other countries.

A remote search typically involves trying to access a suspect's computer over the internet to explore the data contained on it.

It has pushed for a change in the rules since 2013, arguing that criminals can mask their location and identity online making it difficult to determine which jurisdiction a computer is located in.

'Only mechanism available'

"Criminals now have ready access to sophisticated anonymising technologies to conceal their identity while they engage in crime over the internet," said DoJ spokesman Peter Carr.

"The use of remote searches is often the only mechanism available to law enforcement to identify and apprehend them.

"The amendment makes explicit that it does not change the traditional rules governing probable cause and notice."

It said the change would not give law enforcement any new authority not already permitted by law.

However, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have warned that the change could expand the FBI's ability to conduct mass hacks on computer networks.

'Thousands of millions of computers'

"Such a monumental change in the law should not be snuck by Congress under the guise of a procedural rule," said Neema Singh Guliani of the ACLU.

In 2015, search giant Google also opposed the change, which, it said, "threatens to undermine the privacy rights and computer security of internet users".

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said the change had "significant consequences for Americans' privacy", and said he would seek to reverse the decision.

"Under the proposed rules, the government would now be able to obtain a single warrant to access and search thousands or millions of computers at once; and the vast majority of the affected computers would belong to the victims, not the perpetrators, of a cybercrime," he said in a statement.

Congress can still opt to reject or modify the changes to the federal rules of criminal procedure - but if it does not act by 1 December the change will take effect.

Source: BBC