Security News

Ransomware gangs have officially entered the 2020 election fray, with reports of one of the first breaches of the voting season, on Hall County, Ga. The county's database of voter signatures was impacted in the attack along with other government systems. Although the county said the voting process hasn't been impacted by the ransomware attack, the incident is a warning to other municipalities to lock down their systems, particularly in these last days leading up to the election.

SecurityScorecard released a report earlier this month that looked through the overall cybersecurity posture of all 56 US states and territories leading up to the presidential election. The study found that 75% of all states and territories had IT infrastructures that are vulnerable to a variety of cyberattacks.

Attacks growing increasingly sophisticated and destructive. As eCrime groups grow more powerful, these attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated and destructive - respondents reported that 82 percent of attacks now involve instances of counter incident response, and 55 percent involve island hopping, where an attacker infiltrates an organization's network to launch attacks on others within the supply chain.

With the U.S. presidential elections a mere few weeks away, the security industry is hyper-aware of security vulnerabilities in election infrastructure, cyberattacks against campaign staffers and ongoing disinformation campaigns. The good news, Olney, said in a recent video interview with Threatpost, is that awareness of election-security threats has increased since the 2016 elections.

American voters face an especially pivotal, polarized election this year, and scammers here and abroad are taking notice - posing as fundraisers and pollsters, impersonating candidates and campaigns, and launching fake voter registration drives. It's not votes they're after, but to win a voter's trust, personal information and maybe a bank routing number.

Google says its Threat Analysis Group hasn't observed any significant coordinated influence campaigns that are targeting United States voters on its platform. Google also notes that users who were identified as being targeted in such attacks were alerted, and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was also informed of these attacks.

75% of all 56 U.S. states and territories leading up to the presidential election, showed signs of a vulnerable IT infrastructure, a SecurityScorecard report reveals. Since most state websites offer access to voter and election information, these findings may indicate unforeseen issues leading up to, and following, the US election.

Cybercriminals are chaining Microsoft's Zerologon flaw with other exploits in order to infiltrate government systems, putting election systems at risk, a new CISA and FBI advisory warns. The advisory details how attackers are chaining together various vulnerabilities and exploits - including using VPN vulnerabilities to gain initial access and then Zerologon as a post-exploitation method - to compromise government networks.

Government-backed hackers have compromised and gained access to US elections support systems by chaining together VPN vulnerabilities and the recent Windows CVE-2020-1472 security flaw. "Although it does not appear these targets are being selected because of their proximity to elections information, there may be some risk to elections information housed on government networks," says a joint security advisory published by CISA and the FBI. Despite that, CISA added that it is "Aware of some instances where this activity resulted in unauthorized access to elections support systems."

The emails purport to come from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency of the United States government that serves as a national resource of information regarding election administration. The emails subject says "voter registration application details couldnt be confirmed," and the body of the email tells users: "Your Arizona voter's registration application submitted has been reviewed by your County Clerk and some few details couldnt be comfirmed".