Category Archives: 2020 elections

59 security experts reject Trump’s election fraud claims as ‘incoherent’

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A group of 59 computer scientists, researchers and cybersecurity experts on Monday released a letter rejecting President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread electoral fraud as “technically incoherent” and “unsubstantiated” in the latest rebuke of Trump’s campaign to undermine public confidence in the election results. “We are aware of alarming assertions being made that the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ by exploiting technical vulnerabilities,” wrote the group of experts, which included Matt Blaze, a cryptologist and professor at Georgetown University, and Alex Stamos, the former security chief at Facebook. “However, in every case of which we are aware, these claims either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.” Since multiple media outlets, including Fox News and the Associated Press, on Nov. 7 projected Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, Trump and his allies have continuously made false claims of election fraud. The director of the Department of Homeland Security’s […]

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Lawmakers back CISA chief Krebs after report that he expects to be fired

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Multiple Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Thursday reacted with concern to a media report that a senior Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity official has told associates that he expects to be fired by the White House. Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were among those who hailed the work of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Director Chris Krebs, who has been at the forefront of federal agencies’ efforts to protect the 2020 election from hacking and disinformation. “It would not be a surprise [but] would disappoint me profoundly if he were to be fired,” Langevin, who is co-founder of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, said in an interview. “I think Chris Krebs has served in his role as director of CISA with great professionalism, with passion, in a nonpartisan way. He’s someone who is respected on both sides of the aisle.” Krebs, […]

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Former DOJ officials slam Barr’s new policy on election investigations

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Former Justice Department officials on Tuesday sharply criticized Attorney General William Barr for reportedly reversing a longstanding department policy and clearing federal prosecutors to investigate alleged voting irregularities before election results have been certified. “The voters decide the winner in an election, not the president, and not the attorney general,” reads the statement from the Bipartisan Advisory Board of the Voter Protection Program, a nonpartisan election security initiative. The advisory board includes former Justice Department officials who served under Republican and Democratic administrations. “Thanks to a bipartisan group of experienced officials and poll workers across this country, the states, once again, ran fair and secure elections,” the statement continued. “We have seen absolutely no evidence of anything that should get in the way of certification of the results, which is something the states handle, not the federal government.” The criticism follows multiple media reports Monday that Barr gave Justice Department prosecutors the go-ahead to […]

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How the pandemic helped election officials prepare for a flood of misinformation

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As Americans await the results of a heated presidential contest, election officials are in the spotlight in a country on edge. They are trying to sift through a fog of domestic misinformation, and their methodical process for counting and verifying ballots is belying demands to hurry up, or stop. Now, security experts say months of extraordinary preparation during the coronavirus are paying off. After months of explaining how elections would work during a pandemic, state and local officials are projecting confidence to the public by being open about their work. Election officials have “transformed some of the challenges associated with COVID into opportunities to increase transparency and election administration education,” said Liz Howard, senior counsel at the Democracy Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “Before the election, when many election officials received calls and questions from voters about their absentee ballot security measures, many offered to provide tours of their offices to the […]

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After a quiet election night on the cyber front, officials preach vigilance as results come in

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After years of preparation from security professionals and election officials, Election Day went down without any significant publicly reported cybersecurity incidents, U.S. officials told reporters Tuesday. Federal and state officials were on watch for any unusual digital activity, but all in an all, it was just “another Tuesday on the internet,” as a senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency official put it. In other words, there were no reports of targeted cyberattacks from U.S. adversaries. Security experts chalked the smooth operation up to vigilance on the part of officials across the election ecosystem, and the resiliency built into the voting process. Voting machines and electronic pollbooks suffered glitches in certain counties in Georgia and Ohio, but they were technical errors that are to be expected and not caused by anything malicious. Election administrators quickly reverted to paper backups and the voting process carried on. Officials at the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and […]

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Robocalls urging voters to skip Election Day are subject of FBI investigation, DHS official says

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The FBI is investigating apparent voter suppression robocalls across the nation, a senior Department of Homeland Security official said Tuesday. An estimated 10 million calls have gone out urging people to “stay safe and stay home.” There also were reports of robocalls in Michigan falsely telling voters they could vote on Wednesday, because lines on Election Day were long. The FBI is “tracking down this issue,” said the senior official in DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The FBI did not immediately return a request for comment. In the call with reporters, conducted on the condition of anonymity, the CISA official said it was nothing out of the ordinary. “Robocalls of this nature happen in every election,” the official said. The FBI’s investigation into robocalls isn’t the only one this campaign season. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently filed felony charges against conservative operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, alleging that they were responsible […]

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How Twitter, Facebook say they will treat premature claims of electoral victory

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With less than 24 hours before Election Day in the United States, social media platforms were still announcing plans about how they intend to flag premature and unfounded claims of victory in the event that a candidate tries to seize on a moment of global anxiety for their own gain. While Twitter previously said it would flag misleading claims about election results, the company on Monday clarified the criteria on which it will base its decisions. President Trump has told several close associates that he plans to declare victory on election night if he looks like he’s “ahead,” regardless of the official tally, according to Axios. Twitter, meanwhile, has made it clear that it will consider such claims premature if they come before at least two outlets from a pool including ABC News, the Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Decision Desk HQ, Fox News, and NBC News publicly share their projections or election results. Twitter has also said […]

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Last-minute court rulings on election go against GOP, voting restrictions

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A federal judge on Monday rejected a Texas GOP bid to throw out approximately 127,000 ballots in largely Democratic Harris County, saying the Republicans failed to demonstrate that they were harmed by the votes cast at extra drive-through locations. It was one of two major election cases to see action on Monday. In both cases, courts sided against conservative challenges over voting in Democrat-friendly jurisdictions. But it might only foreshadow more legal challenges ahead, after the election. In Texas, GOP activist Steven Hotze brought the case alongside Harris County Republicans state Rep. Steve Toth, congressional candidate Wendell Champion and judicial candidate Sharon Hemphill. They contended the extra 10 drive-through stations violated state election law, in an argument that centered on the definition of curbside voting. The clerk for Harris County, Houston’s home, rebutted the conservatives’ argument on several fronts. but the issue of whether they had standing to sue apparently caught the attention of U.S. District Judge Hanen. […]

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$100 million botnet scheme earns Russian man 8 years in prison

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A U.S. judge sentenced a Russian national to eight years in prison over his role in stealing personal and financial information via a botnet conspiracy that aimed to generate an estimated $100 million. Prosecutors announced the sentence Monday for Aleksandr Brovko, who pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud. From 2007 to 2019, according to the Department of Justice, Brovko collaborated with other cybercriminals to turn data troves harvested by botnets — networks of infected computers — into cash. Brovko’s role was to write software scripts to go through botnet logs and conduct data searches to extract highly sensitive personal information and online banking credentials, as well as scout out the value of compromised accounts to determine whether they’d be worth using to conduct fraud. In all, prosecutors said, Brovko possessed and trafficked more than 200,000 “unauthorized access devices,” a term for credit cards, mobile identification […]

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