Security News
A declassified joint report from several United States agencies assesses that Russian and Iranian threat actors did attempt to meddle in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, but claims that the technical integrity of the voting process wasn't affected. The joint report is meant to provide information on the extent to which foreign actors attempted interference with the 2020 U.S. elections, along with details on whether these adversaries targeted political organizations, campaigns, or election candidates, and an assessment on whether the attacks were able to successfully compromise the targeted infrastructure.
The USA's Office of National Intelligence today released its previously classified assessment of "Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Elections" and found "Some successful compromises of state and local government networks prior to Election Day-as well as a higher volume of unsuccessful attempts". It's described as the intelligence community's collective assessment of attempts to disrupt the 2020 election and to contain "Analytic judgments identical to those in the classified version" but without "Full supporting information" or information on "Specific intelligence reports, sources , or methods."
Twin cyber operations conducted by state-sponsored Iranian threat actors demonstrate their continued focus on compiling detailed dossiers on Iranian citizens that could threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic, including dissidents, opposition forces, and ISIS supporters, and Kurdish natives. Tracing the extensive espionage operations to two advanced Iranian cyber-groups Domestic Kitten and Infy, cybersecurity firm Check Point revealed new and recent evidence of their ongoing activities that involve the use of a revamped malware toolset as well as tricking unwitting users into downloading malicious software under the guise of popular apps.
Iranian cyber actors are likely behind a campaign that encouraged deadly violence against U.S. state officials certifying the 2020 election results. Titled "Enemies of the People," the website was created on December 6, and by the middle of the month included personal details of individuals that did not support the current U.S. President's claims of voter fraud.
In 1965, Gordon Moore published a short informal paper, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Based on not much more but these few data points and his knowledge of silicon chip development - he was head of R&D at Fairchild Semiconductors, the company that was to seed Silicon Valley - he said that for the next decade, component counts by area could double every year.
The DarkSide Ransomware operation claims they are creating a distributed storage system in Iran to store and leak data stolen from victims. In this topic, DarkSide has stated that they are working on a distributed storage system to store and leak victims' stolen data.
All of the domains, seizure documents reveal, were violating U.S. sanctions against the government of Iran and the IRGC. Twenty-three of the domains were targeting audiences abroad. The other four, the U.S. Department of Justice reveals, were posing as news outlets, but were in fact controlled by the IRGC to target audiences in the United States. The purpose of these domains was to covertly influence U.S. policy and public opinion, thus violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation shared indicators of compromise associated with the Iranian state-sponsored threat group behind last week's Proud Boys voter intimidation emails that targeted Democratic voters. The threatening spoofed emails used the "Vote for Trump or Else" subject and warned voters registered as Democrats that they must vote for President Trump and change their party to Republican unless they want the Proud Boys far-right group to come after them.
The two conferences targeted include the Munich Security Conference, slated for Feb. 19 to 21, 2021 and the Think 20 Summit in Saudi Arabia, taking place Oct. 31 to Nov. 1 2020. Microsoft linked the attack, which targeted more than 100 conference attendees, to Phosphorus, which it said is operating from Iran.
The FBI and the US government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Thursday issued a joint warning that a Kremlin hacking crew is probing or breaking into systems belonging to the US government and aviation industry. The joint advisory states that the team, known as Energetic Bear among other monikers, has been specifically going after US state, local, territorial, and tribal government networks, as well as aviation, since at least September 2020.