Christopher Krebs, undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security's National Protection and Programs Directorate
Iran Press/America: The director of the US cyber and infrastructure security agency (CISA), Chris Krebs, has issued 'an emergency directive to US civilian agencies requiring immediate actions to protect federal information systems from ongoing DNS hijacking and tampering activities'.
DNS is a directory service system underpinning the internet, and DNS hijacking is when the attacker redirects something to route to the wrong place-often a place they can monitor and manipulate.
According to the new emergency directive, Federal agencies are being required to audit these public systems to identify whether any malicious actors have modified them to direct people to attacker-controlled addresses, Sky News reported.
Prompted by disagreements over President Donald Trump's $5.6bn budget request for a border wall with Mexico, the shutdown has now stretched into its 34th day (Thursday) and become the longest in US history.
Related news:
Trump and law makers fail to resolve shutdown
As no budget has been passed, many federal employees have been furloughed from their jobs, left unpaid and effectively ordered to not come into work, including those who maintain the security of IT systems.
Despite more than 800,000 public workers being left unpaid and about a quarter of the federal government closed, on Jan 05, 2019, Trump has threatened to keep the partial shutdown going for “months, or even years” if he does not get the $5.6 billion he has demanded for the proposed border wall, according to a report by The Independent.
Three weeks ago, a White House meeting between Democrats and Republicans on partial shutdown yielded no deal. 103/210
Read more:
With no voting in congress, US government shutdown continues
Opinion Poll: Americans blame Trump and Republicans for shutdown
