Category Archives: election security

As voters cast their ballots, courts nationwide issue election security edicts

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Legal battles with election security implications raged across the country over the holiday weekend, even with early voting well underway at historic levels in many states. In no state did those two things coincide more than in Georgia. Peach State voters amassed in lines marked by reports of 10-hour waits on Tuesday, following two key court rulings. Northern District of Georgia Judge Amy Totenberg on Sunday denied a bid to scuttle touch screen voting machines over cybersecurity vulnerabilities. On Monday, she also denied a request to require a specific number of emergency ballots to be on hand at Georgia polling sites. The ruling Sunday represented a setback for election integrity advocates who contend that Georgia’s machines have not been secure enough, and still aren’t. Totenberg ruled last year that Georgia must phase out its existing paperless voting machines, citing doubts about cybersecurity safeguards for direct-recording election equipment tabulations that couldn’t be audited without a paper record. […]

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Election Systems Under Attack via Microsoft Zerologon Exploits

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Cybercriminals are chaining Microsoft’s Zerologon flaw with other exploits in order to infiltrate government systems, putting election systems at risk, a new CISA and FBI advisory warns. Continue reading Election Systems Under Attack via Microsoft Zerologon Exploits→

Foreign hackers are targeting federal, state and local IT networks, feds warn

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Foreign government-linked hackers have been exploiting old software vulnerabilities in an effort to access federal, state and local computer networks in ongoing activity, the FBI and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned Friday. The federal advisory, which did not point the finger at a particular foreign government, said that the malicious cyber activity had in some cases “resulted in unauthorized access to elections support systems.” However, FBI and CISA officials said there was “no evidence to date that integrity of elections data has been compromised.” “Although it does not appear these targets are being selected because of their proximity to elections information, there may be some risk to elections information housed on government networks,” the FBI and CISA advisory said. “Elections support systems” are typically IT infrastructure, like email servers, that local government officials use for a range of business, whether related to an election or not. Those systems are […]

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Twitter to limit politicians’ premature claims of victory, remove calls for violence

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With less than a month until Election Day in the U.S., Twitter said it would limit politicians’ ability to claim premature electoral victories, and remove calls for violence or interference in election results. Tweets claiming false victories will be flagged and users will be directed to credible information about the election, the company announced Friday. Any tweet intended to incite electoral interference, whether in the presidential or congressional races, will be removed. The policy change comes amid a contentious election in which President Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned the integrity of the vote and made unfounded claims about fraud. Twitter has been labeling Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting and directing users to factual information, but critics have called on the platform to do more. In the unrest following the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in May, Trump tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a message […]

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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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