mr. krebs, the united states is it its primary and special election season now. you mention in your testimony as a result of assessing activity in the 2016 election dhs is actually increasing awareness of potential vulnerabilities and providing capabilities to enhance u.s. and allied election infrastructure. what authority or other help does dhs and its stakeholders need to better secure use election infrastructure? >> thank you for the question. i think since 2016 we made significant progress in terms of securing america's election infrastructure. as i mentioned i think the one piece of legislation i need within my organization is cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency act. that will streamline my organization, make us more effective in terms of engaging our stakeholders. remember that my authorities are almost entirely voluntary and someone had to be able to do is clearly articulate who i am, what it is that you and now i can do. the national protection and programs directorate does

mr. krebs, do you have anything to add to that? >> no, sir. how about you, doc? no, senator. >> okay. if he did personal own assets in we united states, why would not as a sanction consider hypothetically? > hypothetically, senator, if any russian oligarch or senior leader had assets in the united an es, of course, that's action that we would consider ndertaking, assuming it's within our legal authorities to do so. well, this is just my opinion, but here's what i think. i think mr. putin does own states, andhe united what k the treasury knows those assets are. and whether we do it in a or unclassified setting, that's above my pay rade, but i could like us to have a frank and honest iscussion about the ramifications of seizing those assets. would you object to that? all, senator. >> okay. question. dr. ford, let's suppose that the president of the united states said, look, i've enough. chemical yria, weapons, meddling in american elections. it, but i want to russian economy to its knees. how wou

mr. krebs? >> chairman crepo, ranking member brown, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the department of homeland security's ongoing effort to mitigate cybersecurity risks to our nation's infrastructure. safe guarding cyberand securing cyberspace is a core mission that i have an honor to lead for dhs. malicious cyberoperations remain one of the most strategic threats to united states, holding our national security, economic prosperity, the integrity of our democracy and public health and safety at risk. over the past several years, network defenders in both government and industry have seen the threat landscape grow more crowded, active and dangerous. in fact, 2017 was one of the most costly and active in terms of global cybersecurity incidents, including the wanna cry ransom ware incident attributed to north korea. dhs and our agency partners worked with industry to identify an alert on russian government efforts to infiltrate domestic energy infrastructure. adv

mr. krebs was your from dhs also testified in november. at that hearing we asked him for documents showing how russia attacked our states. doing our duty a as a check on e executive branch. at first mr. krebs gave us only a single document. later he gave us 50 pages, much of which was already public. thank you very much. we sent a letter asking chairman gowdy to subpoena the documents dhs was withholding, but he ignored it. we sent another letter asking him to let us vote on a subpoena, but he denied our motion. because this issue is so important, we joined with the ranking members of other key committees and sent a letter to speaker paul ryan. we implored him to help us get from the trump administration these documents about how russia attacked our states. but all we got was silence. silence. radio silence. was not into special counsel robert mueller indicted 12 russian military officials on july 13 that we finally learned something more about the specific attacks russia launched against our s