New DoJ Cyber Prosecution Team Will Go After Nation-State Threat Actors

The US Department of Justice has created a new National Security Cyber Section, also known as NatSec Cyber, to respond to increasing cybersecurity threats from nation-state actors.

The new NatSec Cyber division will work in coordination with the DoJ Criminal Division's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and the FBI's Cyber Division, to quickly respond and prosecute cyberattacks from state-backed cybercriminals, according to the agency's announcement.

The naming of a dedicated team of DoJ cybercrime lawyers comes in the wake of major cyberattack campaigns targeting US interests including the Russian group Cl0P's ongoing ransomware attacks on the MOVEit file transfer zero-day flaw, and ramped-up cyber espionage attacks out of China including the recent Volt Typhoon cyberattacks.

"NatSec Cyber will give us the horsepower and organizational structure we need to carry out key roles of the Department in this arena," Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department's National Security Division said in a statement announcing the new team. "This new section will allow NSD to increase the scale and speed of disruption campaigns and prosecutions of nation-state threat actors, state-sponsored cybercriminals, associated money launderers, and other cyber-enabled threats to national security."