Category Archives: Donald Trump

Michigan police execute warrant looking for missing election equipment

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The Michigan State Police launched a criminal investigation this week after a piece of election equipment went missing. The inquiry comes after a local official—who has publicly questioned the validity and security of the 2020 election—had refused to allow a company vendor to run maintenance on the machine. Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott had been stripped of her election administration authority on Monday for failing to confirm that she would follow state law in certifying that public accuracy testing had been completed. A spokesperson for the Michigan State Police told CyberScoop Friday that the agency executed a search warrant in the rural community as part of an investigation requested by the Secretary of State, but declined to offer any additional information. Neither Scott nor a spokesperson for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson responded to requests for comment. This is the second example in recent months of election officials taking extreme […]

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Biden says ‘shooting war’ could break out with foreign heavyweights over cyberattacks

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The U.S. is “more likely” to end up in a “real shooting war with a major power” over a cyber incident than other kinds of conflict, President Joe Biden suggested on Tuesday. “We’ve seen how cyber threats, including ransomware attacks, increasingly are able to cause damage and disruption to the real world,” he said at a speech at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia. “And it’s increasing exponentially — the capabilities.” While Biden delivered his speech before intelligence personnel, at least one of his intended recipients appeared to be Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Biden administration has been talking tough about Russia providing safe haven for ransomware gangs believed to be responsible for headline-making attacks on Colonial Pipeline, JBS and Kaseya. Biden has pressed that message to Putin directly as recently as July. Russia has rejected U.S. suggestions of wrongdoing. “I can’t […]

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Cozy Bear revisits one of its greatest hits, researchers say: election skulduggery

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It looks like the Russian government-linked hacking group Cozy Bear is back in the election trickery business. The security firm Volexity publicized a spearphishing campaign on Thursday that it identified only days ago, a scheme that uses an election fraud document as a lure. The emails purport to be from the the United States Agency for International Development, with targets including government agencies, research institutions and nongovernmental organizations in the U.S. and Europe. Volexity said it had concluded, with moderate confidence, that Cozy Bear — the group also known as APT29 or the Dukes — was behind the emails. If true, it would be a return to an old favorite subject for Cozy Bear, which the U.S. government and others implicated in the 2016 hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, among other election interference efforts. More recently, Cozy Bear has garnered attention from the Biden […]

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US spy agencies review software suppliers’ ties to Russia following SolarWinds hack

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U.S. intelligence agencies have begun a review of supply chain risks emanating from Russia in light of the far-reaching hacking campaign that exploited software made by SolarWinds and other vendors, a top Justice Department official said Thursday. The review will focus on any supply chain vulnerabilities stemming from Russian companies — or U.S. companies that do business in Russia, according to John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security. “If there’s back-end software design and coding being done in a country where we know that they’ve used sophisticated cyber means to do intrusions into U.S. companies, then maybe … U.S. companies shouldn’t be doing work with those companies from Russia or other untrusted countries,” Demers said during a Justice Department-hosted cybersecurity conference. Demers said that the FBI and other intelligence agencies will pass any information obtained from the review to the Commerce Department to decide if further action to exclude […]

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For Microsoft, cybersecurity has become bigger than business

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Since the cybersecurity firm FireEye hired Microsoft to help investigate a hack at the federal contractor SolarWinds, Microsoft has helped clean up the mess, alerted victims and distributed other details meant to fend off alleged Russian spies. Microsoft did all of that as it wrestled with its own probe of how hackers infiltrated its systems. Yet the company’s role in the SolarWinds investigation, while significant, represents a fraction of the cybersecurity-focused work Microsoft has done in recent years, including some behind the scenes and some in globe-spanning public relations campaigns. Once viewed as a traditional tech behemoth, Microsoft has evolved into a firm that fights cybersecurity battles in court, in election administration, in the international sphere, in the marketplace and elsewhere. The entirety of that perspective gives Microsoft a unique — if imperfect — place in the cybersecurity universe. The size of the company, and its level of visibility into […]

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US arrests Twitter troll accused of spreading election disinformation in 2016

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U.S. law enforcement officials say they’ve arrested an infamous far-right troll for allegedly using social media to spread disinformation in support of Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Douglass Mackey, a 31-year-old Florida man, is accused of using Twitter and other platforms to disenfranchise voters by encouraging them to vote via text or social media, which are invalid voting methods. Law enforcement officials arrested Mackey, who was better known as Ricky Vaughn on social media, on Wednesday, the Justice Department said in a statement. The arrest shows how investigations into electoral interference can take years, and is a reminder of the din of domestic disinformation that still challenges U.S. democracy. While the Russian effort to sow disinformation among U.S. voters in 2016 gained widespread attention, U.S.-based propagandists were also active. Mackey and other unnamed associates allegedly flooded social media for two months prior to Election Day in 2016, urging people to […]

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Biden orders US intelligence review of SolarWinds hack

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President Joe Biden has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to provide him with an assessment of a suspected Russian hacking operation that breached multiple U.S. federal agencies and exposed glaring weaknesses in U.S. cyber-defenses, the White House said Thursday. The move highlights how responding to the sophisticated spying operation, which has exploited software made by federal contractor SolarWinds, will shape the early days of Biden’s administration. It was not immediately clear what the intelligence review would entail, but Biden has vowed to get a full understanding of the computer intrusions and their impact. “Even as we work with Russia to advance U.S. interests, so, too, we work to hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. Moscow has denied involvement in the hacking campaign. Biden has also tasked intelligence agencies with reviewing the extent of Russian interference in the 2020 election, […]

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