Category Archives: 2020 elections

Judge orders Georgia to use paper records at polling places to avoid Election Day delays

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A federal judge on Monday ordered polling places across Georgia to keep updated, backup paper records of eligible voters to avoid long lines and disenfranchisement on Election Day. The ruling is intended to prevent a repeat of the June primary election in Georgia, in which voting integrity groups say the malfunctioning of electronic pollbooks caused long waits at the polls. It comes as election officials across the country prepare for an unprecedented election marked by changes in procedure because of the coronavirus. The order from U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg instructs Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “provide at least a modicum of the voting backup plan tools essential to protect” voters’ rights to cast a ballot. Civil society groups had sought the injunction after the difficulties in the primary. “It is not too late for [Raffensperger and other election officials] to take these reasonable concrete measures to mitigate […]

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Microsoft looks to expose espionage groups taking aim at NGOs, US politics

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Foreign espionage groups, including those bent on undermining the U.S. political process, have targeted non-government organizations and think tanks more than any other sector in a bid to gather intelligence, according to new data from Microsoft. Of the thousands of notifications Microsoft made to customers about state-linked hacking activity from mid-2019 to mid-2020, NGOs accounted for 32% of those alerts, the company said in a report released Tuesday. And over 90% of those notifications have been outside of critical infrastructure sectors. The focus on targets outside Washington suggests hacking groups could be in search of softer targets during an election season when Democratic and Republican campaigns have enlisted more people and technology to protect their networks. Those changes came after suspected Russian military hackers breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and leaked emails aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “At the national level and the leading campaigns, there’s a much higher degree of vigilance,” Microsoft’s Tom Burt told CyberScoop, comparing the state of […]

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With an eye on election interference, Facebook scrubs networks of phony Russian accounts

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Facebook on Thursday removed over 200 phony accounts and dozens of pages that originated in Russia and pumped out information on sensitive geopolitical issues targeting people from Turkey to the U.S. Facebook said it traced the fraudulent activity to either people connected with Russian military intelligence services or the Internet Research Agency, a notorious Russia-based troll farm. It’s the latest in a series of actions that Facebook has taken against suspected foreign influence operations heading into the U.S. presidential election. “While we have not seen the networks we removed today…directly target the US 2020 election, they are linked to actors associated with election interference in the US in the past, including those involved in ‘DC leaks’ in 2016,” Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said in a blog post. As with another suspected Russia-based influence operation that Facebook uncovered this month, the latest activity saw operatives pose as journalists or writers in an […]

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Election cyberthreats have been ‘blocked, minimal or easily mitigated,’ federal agencies remind voters

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For the second time in a week, U.S. national security agencies have publicly reassured voters that election systems are being guarded from hacking and that the integrity of the vote is intact. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “have not identified any threats, to date, capable of preventing Americans from voting or changing vote tallies for the 2020 elections,” the agencies said in a statement published Thursday. “[A]ttempts by cyber actors to compromise election infrastructure could slow but not prevent voting,” the agencies said, adding that any threats to date have “remained localized and were blocked, minimal or easily mitigated.” The announcement follows an advisory from the agencies on Tuesday warning that foreign actors could seize on delays in the reporting of election results to spread disinformation aimed at undermining confidence in the vote. The statements show how federal agencies, which have worked […]

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FBI, CISA: Foreign actors likely to spread disinformation on election results

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U.S. national security agencies said on Tuesday that foreign actors and cybercriminals could seize on delays in the reporting of election results to spread disinformation aimed at undermining confidence in the vote. Those adversaries could peddle false reports of “voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy,” the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a public advisory. Crooks or spies could set up websites or social media accounts to spread the false information, the agencies added. “The public should also be aware that if foreign actors or cyber criminals were able to successfully change an election-related website, the underlying data and internal systems would remain uncompromised,” the FBI and CISA statement said. The agencies urged voters to “rely on state and local government election officials” for official election results. With […]

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Combating U.S. Election Cyberthreats

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Government elections across the globe face huge cybersecurity concerns, but no more so than the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November. The entire process presents numerous opportunities for cyber hackers to skew the electoral process or even… Continue reading Combating U.S. Election Cyberthreats→

Twitter bolsters security for political accounts as election looms

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Just weeks away from the U.S. presidential election, Twitter says it is taking extra steps to secure high-profile accounts, such as political campaigns and major news outlets, whose compromise could impact voter perceptions. Twitter began rolling out the new security features, such as strong password requirements, on Thursday to the election-related accounts, including secretaries of state overseeing the vote and federal agencies and lawmakers. Accounts will be “strongly encouraged” to use two-factor authentication to prevent hacking, the social media platform said. In the weeks ahead, Twitter said it would implement “more sophisticated detections and alerts” to keep hackers from breaking into accounts. The eleventh-hour move to heighten account security reflects what Twitter executives described as the “unique sensitivities of the election period.” Four years ago, Russian bots and trolls spread disinformation on Twitter in a bid to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and boost Donald Trump. This year, U.S. intelligence agencies […]

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Election Interference: The Russians Are Back, or They Never Left

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Every day brings new revelations on Russia’s strategy of disruption to the west, the United States specifically. As Yogi Berra said, “It is déjà vu all over again”—in December 2017 we wrote it was already “Déjà Vu All Over Agai… Continue reading Election Interference: The Russians Are Back, or They Never Left→

NSA director ranks influence operations as a top concern

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Foreign influence operations are “the next great disruptor” in the U.S. intelligence community, the director of the National Security Agency said Wednesday. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who also serves as the head of Cyber Command, the Pentagon’s offensive cyber outfit, said he thinks influence efforts have the potential to shape the U.S. intelligence community’s operational environment for years to come. Planting misinformation and spreading disinformation are attractive ways for American adversaries to spread confusion in the U.S., in part because they can be inexpensive and they allow the opportunity to spread discord while operating below the level of armed conflict, Nakasone said. Disinformation specialists have said weaponized misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories already are having an effect on American life, in part because so many social media users spread sensational falsehoods, thinking they’re acting in good faith. “We’ve seen it now in our democratic processes,” Nakasone said during remarks at the virtual Intelligence and National Security […]

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Twitter plans to remove false election tweets, setting up clash with Trump

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Just wait until the president hears about this one. Twitter announced on Thursday that it will label or remove false or misleading information that could cause confusion about an election, or is meant to undermine confidence in civic processes. The update includes enforcement against unverified claims of election rigging, ballot tampering, claiming a political victory before election results are certified and inciting unlawful conduct to prevent a peaceful transfer of power or orderly succession. The announcement does not mention President Donald Trump by name. It does, however, signal that the company will be more aggressive in checking the president’s claims as Election Day approaches. For months, Trump has used his Twitter feed to amplify unfounded claims that mail-in voting enables widespread fraud, and this month urged his supporters to vote twice. “The goal is to further protect against content that could suppress the vote and help stop the spread of harmful misinformation […]

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