America’s top cyber diplomat says his Twitter account was hacked

By Sean Lyngaas, CNN

America’s top cybersecurity diplomat Nate Fick said his personal Twitter account was hacked, calling it part of the “perils of the job.”

Fick tweeted the news from his personal account Saturday evening.

It was not clear who was responsible for the hack or if they had made any unauthorized posts on Fick’s account. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

There did not appear to any broader fallout from the hack. Fick uses the account sparingly and instead promotes his work through an official State Department account.

President Joe Biden announced in June his intent to nominate Fick, a Marine Corps veteran and former chief executive of a cybersecurity firm, to lead the newly formed Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy.

The new bureau is an effort to make digital rights issues an intrinsic part of US foreign policy at a time when Russia and China are increasingly trying to put their own authoritarian stamp on the internet.

Fick was sworn into office in September as the country’s first “ambassador-at-large” for cyberspace and digital policy. His charge includes helping build US allies’ ability to respond to cyberattacks and promoting secure 5G communications technology.

Fick is scheduled to travel to Seoul this week to discuss cybersecurity cooperation with the South Korean government, according to the State Department. Washington and Seoul share a common cyberspace foe in North Korea, which has robust hacking capabilities despite its reputation as a digital backwater.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.