Category Archives: 2020 elections

Senate Democrats push feds to stand up disinformation ‘response center’ ordered in NDAA

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With the presidential election just four months away, 15 Senate Democrats have asked national security agencies to step up their efforts to counter foreign disinformation aimed at undermining the vote. The Trump administration should ensure that political candidates and the public are promptly notified of foreign efforts to interfere in U.S. politics — and set up a congressionally mandated federal office for countering foreign influence, the senators wrote in a letter Friday to the heads of the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “[W]e urge you to take additional measures to fight influence campaigns aimed at disenfranchising voters, especially voters of color,” wrote the senators, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Cory Booker of New Jersey. After the sweeping Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 elections, U.S. officials have tried to do more to combat foreign […]

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Experts: Internet voting isn’t ready for COVID-19 crisis

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Internet technologies are set to play a critical role in the 2020 presidential election, but precisely which voting alternatives will be pursued – and whether they can adequately be secured – is now a $400 million question. COVID-19 doesn’t – at this point – present an excuse to postpone the general election in November. Chris Krebs, Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told a recent Axios forum that 42 U.S. states have mechanisms in place that allow for alternatives to in-person voting, and the other eight have break-glass provisions for doing the same when emergencies require it. A global pandemic would most certainly meet that threshold. The $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill (CARES Act) signed into law last week included $400 million of grants the Election Assistance Commission can give to states to help them “prevent, prepare for and respond to Coronavirus.” Earlier versions of the bill stipulated […]

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Schiff wants ODNI to scrub out politics from election security briefs

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Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, wrote to Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell on Monday asking him to share communications about an intelligence briefing on election security provided to lawmakers last month over concerns that some of the information may have been politicized, according to the letter. During the intelligence briefing in question, which took place behind closed doors March 10, intelligence officials told lawmakers that Russia was not directly supporting any presidential candidates in the buildup to the 2020 presidential election, according to The New York Times. Just days earlier, U.S. intelligence officials told the House Intelligence Committee that Russia had a preference for President Donald Trump’s candidacy, as CyberScoop reported. The discrepancy in the two briefings raised concerns that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began politicizing possible election interference information shared with Congress just after a new acting DNI took the reins. Just days before […]

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HackerOne cuts ties with mobile voting firm Voatz after it clashed with researchers

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HackerOne, a company that pairs ethical hackers with organizations to fix software flaws, has kicked mobile voting vendor Voatz off its platform, citing the vendor’s hostile interactions with security researchers. It is the first time in its eight-year existence that HackerOne, which works with companies from AT&T to Uber, has expelled an organization from its security program. The decision comes after Voatz assailed the motives of MIT researchers who found flaws in the company’s voting app. “After evaluating Voatz’s pattern of interactions with the research community, we decided to terminate the program on the HackerOne platform,” a HackerOne spokesperson told CyberScoop. “We partner with organizations that prioritize acting in good faith towards the security researcher community and providing adequate access to researchers for testing.” It is the latest security-related setback for Voatz, which is trying to make inroads in a market dominated by traditional voting machine manufacturers. In the last […]

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Election commission hires cyber-savvy adviser to support 2020 efforts

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The U.S. Election Assistance Commission is hiring a senior policy adviser to bolster its cybersecurity work with election officials and voting equipment vendors ahead of the 2020 presidential vote. Maurice Turner is set to join the federal commission at the end of the month as a senior adviser to the executive director, supporting the EAC’s internal operations and programing. Externally, he says he can help the commission with an update to important guidelines for voting systems security, and in supporting states as they set up programs to find and fix software vulnerabilities. “I want election officials to expect that EAC is a place that they can go for this type of information,” Turner told CyberScoop. “Whether it’s about security standards or new methods for election administration.” Turner has spent the last two years working on election security at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology. He was previously a fellow […]

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Election commission hires cybersecurity expert to help states with 2020 infrastructure

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The federal agency that oversees funding for states to secure their election equipment is hiring a cybersecurity expert versed in voting technology as it prepares for the 2020 election. Joshua Franklin will start in the coming weeks in a top cybersecurity position at the Election Assistance Commission, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. It is an effort by the EAC, a tiny agency with a big responsibility, to bolster the cybersecurity expertise it has on staff. Franklin, who spent six years as an engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is expected to protect EAC networks from hacking threats and support the commission’s cybersecurity work with state and local election officials. Franklin has been working as an election security advocate for years, drawing attention to the issue at hacking conferences. In 2018, Franklin presented research at DEF CON comparing the vulnerabilities in the websites of House and Senate candidates for the […]

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Former Buttigieg CISO urges DNC to coordinate information sharing between campaigns

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Over the last year, Democratic presidential campaigns have had difficulty sharing threat data between one another, according to the former security boss for Pete Buttigieg’s campaign, raising concerns about the party’s ability to fend off possible interference ahead of the November elections. Mick Baccio, who spent roughly five months working for the now-defunct Buttigieg campaign, told CyberScoop that his team tried sharing information with other campaigns that could have helped officials protect themselves from hackers. The effort was hampered, he said, by a shortage of qualified security staffers on other campaigns, and the lack of a formal information sharing process. Baccio resigned from the campaign in January over philosophical differences. “It’s not that there’s not a want to share. It’s ‘I don’t know who to talk to,’” he said during an interview Wednesday at the Splunk Government Summit in Washington, D.C.. “I don’t know of a formal mechanism; whether it’s through the DNC, DCCC, […]

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Super Tuesday gives feds and states a test run for securing November vote

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Federal and state officials were up late Tuesday monitoring for threats from hackers and trolls to the biggest primary day of the 2020 election season. A watch floor at the Department of Homeland Security kept election administrators across the country plugged into threat data coming in from the intelligence community. While there were some notable technical glitches in the voting process, nothing malicious came to pass. Bleary-eyed officials can go back to work Wednesday with a sigh of relief but also some lessons learned on how to protect the November presidential vote, which U.S. officials have repeatedly warned will draw foreign interference attempts. “We had well over 100 state and local officials in the room with us exchanging information with us throughout the day,” a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division said on a 9 p.m. Eastern call with reporters. “[There are] ways that we can improve […]

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DNC tells campaigns to be wary of contact from fake Sanders team account

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The Democratic National Committee is warning presidential campaigns that someone has been impersonating a Bernie Sanders staffer through a domain registered in a foreign country, with the intention of contacting at least two other campaigns. The chief security officer for the DNC, Bob Lord, said in an email obtained by CyberScoop that adversaries could use the fake personas to set up phone calls or meetings with presidential campaign staffers. “They may impersonate people in the hopes that you will download suspicious files, or click on a link to a phishing site. Sometimes they seek to set up a call or an in-person meeting with the intent to record and publish the interaction,” Lord wrote Wednesday. It wasn’t clear if the actor or actors behind the impersonation successfully interacted with staffers at the campaigns they contacted. “If you receive any emails from a domain that you do not recognize or think is suspicious, please […]

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Sanders informed that Russia is trying to help his campaign

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U.S. officials have informed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that Russia is trying to boost his presidential campaign as part of a broader effort to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections and the crowded Democratic field. It was not clear what the assistance, first reported by The Washington Post, entailed. Sanders confirmed the news Friday, telling reporters in Nevada he had learned about Russian interference in his campaign approximately one month ago. “I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do,” Sanders said in a statement emailed to CyberScoop. “Unlike Donald Trump, I do not consider Vladimir Putin a good friend. He is an autocratic thug who is attempting to destroy democracy and crush dissent in Russia. Let’s be clear, the Russians want to undermine American democracy by dividing us up […]

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