Ellen Nakashima

The sanctions block access to financial or other assets in the United States for seven top figures around Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The administration will claim that the Russian hacking was not equivalent to the kind of espionage the U.S. also conducts, allowing it to sanction those responsible for the operation.

The firm previously acknowledged that it had inadvertently downloaded a software patch used by the Russians as a potential “back door” into victims’ systems.

Russia’s digital Trojan horse communicated for months undetected.

Contrary to President Trump’s claim, the House Intelligence chair had no role in drafting the complaint, the whistleblower’s attorney says.

Earlier this week, citing a “compelling need to protect the autonomy and effectiveness of its investigations,” the Justice Department said it was “unable to provide” special counsel’s investigative files in response to a committee subpoena.

Some senators credit more aggressive U.S. tactics with averting Russian interference in the elections.

The sweep and seriousness of the hack, which took place over four years before being discovered, prompted immediate speculation that it was carried out by a foreign country.

The Trump administration has prioritized countering threats to U.S. national and economic security as China seeks to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant economic power.

Federal agents lured a Chinese government spy to Belgium, where authorities transferred him this week to the United States for prosecution on economic espionage charges, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The FBI cracked a San Bernardino terrorist's phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered and brought to the bureau at least one previously unknown software flaw, according to people familiar with the matter.

As the United States tries to combat terrorism, exceptional powers have been given to gather information about suspected terrorist or espionage threats. One case highlights how those powers imperil traditional safeguards to a defendant's rights in more routine criminal cases.

The crimes include disrupting U.S. banks' public websites in 2012 and 2013, and with breaking into a small dam in upstate New York in an apparent attempt to disrupt its operation.

Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies conducting criminal investigations collected data on cellphone activity thousands of times last year, with each request to a phone company yielding hundreds or thousands of phone numbers of innocent Americans along with those of potential suspects.

Officials have said that NSA surveillance tools have helped disrupt terrorist plots or identify suspects in 54 cases in the United States and overseas. But the importance of phone logs in disrupting those plots has been less clear.