Security News

Two cybersecurity companies focused on election security are teaming up ahead of the November elections to protect dozens of states from a variety of potential attacks on voting infrastructure. This week SpyCloud and CyberDefenses announced a partnership that will see the companies help one in every five election jurisdictions in the United States with cybersecurity around digital election tools.

In one instance, Facebook removed 35 pages, 18 groups, 214 users as well as 34 accounts on Instagram. As part of the announcement, Facebook also revealed details about the number of followers and advertising expenditures related to these accounts.

An unspecified US government agency was hacked by a miscreant who appears to have made off with archives of information. This is according to Uncle Sam's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which on Thursday went into technical detail on how an intruder: broke into staffers' Office 365 accounts; gained access the agency's internal network via its VPN; and installed malware and exfiltrated data.

Bad actors could create or change websites and social media content to discredit this year's electoral process, cautions the FBI and CISA. The 2020 presidential election promises to be a rough and divisive one. A new message from the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warns voters of the likelihood that foreign actors and cybercriminals will try to propagate fake news about the election results to discredit the process and weaken confidence in the US political system.

Threat actors are expected to launch disinformation campaigns targeting the results of the 2020 elections in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in an alert this week. Spreading disinformation on the results of the elections represents a threat to the credibility of the electoral process, meant to undermine confidence in the democratic institutions in the United States, the alert reads.

Two years later, Schiff says that breakdown is still emblematic of the disjointed effort among government agencies, Congress and private companies as they try to identify and address foreign election interference. With President Donald Trump adamant that Russia is not interfering and his administration often trying to block what Congress learns about election threats, it's those private companies that often are being called upon to fill the breach.

Twitter announced this week that it's taking steps to protect high-profile accounts during the upcoming election in the United States. Twitter is reaching out, via an in-app notification, to the owners of accounts associated with government officials, presidential campaigns, political parties, candidates, major news outlets and political journalists.

Confidence levels in securing the election are low, and declining, according to an ISACA survey of more than 3,000 IT governance, risk, security and audit professionals in the US. While federal, state and local governments continue to harden election infrastructure technical controls and security procedures, 56 percent of respondents are less confident in election security since the pandemic started-signaling the need for greater education of the electorate and training of election personnel to drive awareness and trust. Respondents say they believe that funding, legislation, technical controls and election infrastructure are all inadequate, including 63 percent who are not confident in the resilience of election infrastructure, and 57 percent who believe that funding is not sufficient to prevent hacking of elections.

A court hearing on election security in America failed in its own security efforts - when it was zoombombed with porn, swastikas and images of the World Trade Center attacks. The public hearing in an Atlanta federal district court on Friday had approximately 100 people on a Zoom conference call before it was taken over by a participant named Osama who shared his screen and showed offensive images complete with music.

Hacker groups are ramping up activity as the US heads into the peak of election season. To help thwart such attempts, the US Department of State recently announced a multimillion-dollar bounty focused on identifying cybercriminals associated with foreign governments targeting US elections.