Collaborate Disseminate
Hackers claim to have access to classified information linking the president to the origin of the coronavirus and criminal collusion with foreign actors. Continue reading Trump Campaign Website Defaced by Cryptocurrency Scam
Hackers linked with the Chinese government tried to breach associates of the Joe Biden campaign, while hackers with reported connections to the Iranian government targeted President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, Microsoft warned Thursday. In addition, the same Russian military hackers that interfered in the 2016 election targeted a range of political and policy consultants in the U.S. and Europe, the software giant said. The hacking attempts against the Biden and Trump campaigns were unsuccessful, Microsoft said, but they offered another example of foreign espionage efforts weeks before the presidential election. “We have directly notified those who were targeted or compromised so they can take action to protect themselves,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post. “The activity we are announcing today makes clear that foreign activity groups have stepped up their efforts targeting the 2020 election as had been anticipated, and is consistent with what the U.S. government and others […]
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Ohio’s secretary of state has established guidelines for security experts to find and help fix software flaws in the state’s election-related websites, the first such move by a state as the 2020 election approaches. The vulnerability disclosure policy (VDP) covers registration websites for Ohio residents and overseas and military voters, among other sites, and provides legal liability protections for researchers. The program will bolster the efforts of Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s security team at a time when threats to election infrastructure “have never been greater,” the policy states. Under the policy, researchers are required to wait four months after reporting a vulnerability to Ohio officials before going public with it. “We believe that public disclosure of vulnerabilities is an essential part of the vulnerability disclosure process, and that one of the best ways to make software better is to enable everyone to learn from each other’s mistakes,” the […]
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China prefers that President Donald Trump not win a second term, while Russia is working to denigrate presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Friday in an unusually direct statement on election interference. The Chinese government has “expanded its influence efforts” ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, and grown increasingly critical of the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus and its closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston, said William Evanina, head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. Moscow, meanwhile, has used “a range of measures” to try to sully Biden’s candidacy, Evanina said, in line with Russia’s criticism of Biden when he was vice president. “Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television,” Evanina said. The Iranian government, for its part, has looked to undermine U.S. institutions and Trump, and sow divisions among […]
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Government hopes to avoid interference in the upcoming November presidential vote with a hefty reward. Continue reading U.S. Offers Reward of $10M for Info Leading to Discovery of Election Meddling
Election Systems & Software, the biggest vendor of U.S. voting equipment, on Wednesday announced a policy to work more closely with security researchers to find software bugs in the company’s IT networks and websites. “Hackers are going to hack, researchers are going to research, whether or not there’s a policy in place,” Chris Wlaschin, ES&S’s vice president of systems security, told CyberScoop. “We think it’s important to have that safe harbor language out there to set expectations.” The policy allows researchers to probe ES&S’s corporate systems and public-facing websites, but not the election systems in place at jurisdictions around the country, which are subject to different testing regimes. The ES&S policy gives the company 90 days to fix vulnerabilities before researchers can report on them publicly — a standard timeline in the research community. For ES&S, the policy marks another step in collaborating with a white-hat hacking community with which it […]
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Researchers discover pro-Russian narratives being spread via hacked news websites, aimed at attacking NATO.
The post ‘Russians’ Hack News Websites, Sow Anti-NATO Sentiment appeared first on Security Boulevard.
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Four senior Democratic lawmakers have asked the FBI to brief all members of Congress on foreign efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, citing an ongoing disinformation campaign. “We are gravely concerned, in particular, that Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate and the presidential election in November,” wrote Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray last week. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also signed the letter. The four lawmakers did not elaborate on the nature of the foreign interference campaign targeting Congress, but they did include a classified addendum to the letter that draws on the Trump administration’s […]
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The Democratic National Committee on Friday reiterated a warning to Democratic campaigns, state parties and committees about the security risks of using the video-sharing app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance. “Because of the amount of data it tracks, we continue to advise campaign staff to refrain from using TikTok on personal devices,” a DNC official told CyberScoop. “[I]f campaigns are using TikTok for campaign work, we recommend they use a separate phone and account.” The fresh warning, which DNC officials have been making for months, is the latest move by the political party to protect its data from compromise following the Russian hack of the DNC in 2016. It comes as TikTok faces greater scrutiny for its security practices from both U.S. government agencies and corporations. CNN was first to report on the DNC guidance. The video-sharing app is wildly popular. TikTok has been downloaded more than 2 billion […]
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Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has turned to a former White House cybersecurity official to protect the campaign’s networks from hackers. Biden’s campaign said Friday it had hired Chris DeRusha, who served as a White House cybersecurity adviser when Biden was vice president, as the campaign’s chief information security officer. DeRusha, who has also held cybersecurity positions with the State of Michigan, the Department of Homeland Security and Ford Motor Co., will be charged with safeguarding the campaign’s digital assets in an election that U.S. officials expect to draw continued foreign interference. The Biden campaign has also hired software engineer Jacky Chang as its chief technology officer. Chang worked as a technologist for the Democratic National Committee and for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Biden for President takes cybersecurity seriously and is proud to have hired high quality personnel with a diverse breadth of experience, knowledge and […]
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