Security News
Four US citizens have been accused of working on behalf of the Russian government to push pro-Kremlin propaganda and unduly influence elections in Florida. The indictment follows earlier charges last year [PDF] against Moscow resident Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, two unnamed Russian Federal Security Service agents, and four unnamed Americans for their roles in recruiting US political groups to sow discord and division among voters, and push, among other fringe ideologies, California's secession from the US. It's claimed this same group of FSB agents also funded and directed the political campaign of a particular candidate for office in St Petersburg, Florida, in 2019, we're told.
The head of both US Cyber Command and the NSA, Gen. Paul Nakasone, broadly discussed that first organization's offensive cyber operations during the runup to the 2022 midterm elections. "We did conduct operations persistently to make sure that our foreign adversaries couldn't utilize infrastructure to impact us," said Nakasone.
Russian disinformation didn't materially affect the way people voted in the 2016 US presidential election, according to a research study published on Monday, though that doesn't make the effect totally inconsequential. Boffins from New York University, University of Copenhagen, Trinity College Dublin, and Technical University of Munich analyzed more than 700,000 social media posts in April and in October 2016 from Twitter accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian influence operation.
Over the years, there has been a long-standing narrative that foreign state-sponsored threat actors present the most significant cyber threat to the election process. The threat actors also targeted devices belonging to the state boards of elections, state secretaries of state, and organizations that supported election infrastructure to steal voter data.
In this interview for Help Net Security, James Turgal, VP of Cyber Risk, Strategy and Board Relations at Optiv, talks about election cybersecurity and how to keep elections and electoral campaigns safe. After the results of the most recent presidential election was almost overshadowed by so-called "Election deniers" and those who continue to claim fraud in the votes cast, all eyes are on the midterm elections in November.
Election workers in US battleground states have been hit by a surge in phishing and malware-laced emails in the run up to their primaries and the upcoming 2022 midterm elections. That's according to Trellix security researchers, who said malicious emails sent to Arizona county election workers rose 78 percent, from 617 to 1,101, between the first and second quarter of the year, ahead of the state's August 2 primary.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned today of foreign influence operations that might spread disinformation to affect the results of this year's midterm elections. The federal law enforcement agency warned that foreign actors are actively spreading election infrastructure disinformation to manipulate public opinion, discredit the electoral process, sow discord, and encourage a lack of trust in democratic processes and institutions.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in a public service announcement says that cyber activity attempting to compromise election infrastructure is unlikely to cause a massive disruption or prevent voting. "As of the date of this report, the FBI and CISA have no reporting to suggest cyber activity has ever prevented a registered voter from casting a ballot, compromised the integrity of any ballots cast, or affected the accuracy of voter registration information," PSA from the FBI and CISA. "Any attempts tracked by FBI and CISA have remained localized and were blocked or successfully mitigated with minimal or no disruption to election processes," the two agencies says in the report.
Mandiant is "Highly confident" that foreign cyberspies will target US election infrastructure, organizations, and individuals in the run-up to the November midterm elections. "We have tracked activity from groups associated with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other nations targeting organizations and individuals related to elections in the US and/or other nations with apparent goals ranging from information collection and establishing footholds or stealing data for later activity to one known case of a destructive attack against critical election infrastructure," the Mandiant team said in research published today.
Google and its YouTube subsidiary have joined other social media networks pledging to keep the 2022 US midterm elections safe and free from Russian trolls - and anyone else spewing democracy-damaging disinformation - by taking down such content. The election strategies follow Google's move to ban MAGA message-board Truth Social from its Play store until the app removes content that incites violence.