Republican Running in Key Florida Race Says She Was Abducted by Aliens
Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera is one of the frontrunners in the district’s GOP primary. Continue reading Republican Running in Key Florida Race Says She Was Abducted by Aliens
Category Archives: Elections
How Facebook and Google Win By Embedding in Political Campaigns
A new report from the Campaign for Accountability details the questionable role of internet platforms in election races. Continue reading How Facebook and Google Win By Embedding in Political Campaigns
Lawmakers, tech vendors fight over election cybersecurity efforts
Amid ongoing reports of foreign digital meddling in domestic elections, U.S. lawmakers are butting heads with the nation’s largest voting technology companies. Lawmakers ratcheted up the pressure Wednesday, criticizing the companies’ perceived disconnect from federal agencies and shining a spotlight on a diverse and historically unregulated industry. In emails to CyberScoop, the companies pushed back against those statements, highlighting their new and apparently ongoing partnerships with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In December, DHS and the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) launched a non-binding, public-private working group with some of the top vendors involved, called the Sector Coordinating Council. The group is tasked with helping government and industry quietly collaborate on election security efforts. A spokesperson for Nebraska-based Elections Systems and Software (ES&S) said nothing is more important to the company “than ensuring elections are secure and accurate, and any conjectures to the contrary are simply false.” “We welcome conversations about our practices,” the spokesperson […]
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Chinese hackers breach Cambodian government ahead of country’s general election
In the run up to Cambodia’s general election on July 29, a hacking group tied to China has been breaking into multiple organizations that share a connection to either the country’s main opposition party, voting process or human rights movement, according to new research and additional analysis provided by U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye. The findings — made possible through a glaring operational security mistake where hackers left their attack servers exposed on the open internet — help illustrate how governments are leaning on cyber-espionage capabilities to learn about foreign elections. FireEye collected this intelligence by directly accessing the attack servers, which weren’t protected with a password. The firm was able to identify breaches through established lines of communication that existed between the servers and victims. The hacking group in question, known as “TEMP.Periscope,” has been tied multiple times to Chinese-linked cyber operations that used a suite of unique tools to […]
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Two Democratic campaigns hit with DDoS attacks in recent months
Hackers have launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against at least two municipal-level Democratic campaigns in 2018, according to two people familiar with the matter. These incidents, which occurred as the campaigns were focused on primary elections, were publicly unknown prior to this report. The malicious cyber-activity did not appear random, sources told CyberScoop. The attacks hit specific campaign websites at important moments, including during online fundraising periods. In another case, a website was hit while a candidate was receiving good publicity after a public speaking event. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss privately held information, say that news of the incidents has already reached the Democrats’ largest campaigning bodies, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Sources said they were told about the attacks by campaign officials and not cybersecurity experts, leaving a gap in their understanding of the events. Raffi Krikorian, the […]
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DNC pushes employees, campaigns to embrace email security habits ahead of midterms
Staffers at the Democratic National Committee are getting better at spotting phishing emails, a skill that became a top priority after Russian-linked hackers breached the DNC during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, according to Chief Technology Officer Raffi Krikorian. Krikorian and his team have been challenging their colleagues to spot fake malicious emails. Since September of last year — primarily through a phishing simulation platform named Wombat — the DNC’s tech team has been targeting co-workers as part of a broad effort to evaluate internal cybersecurity risks. Staffers are graded on their ability to spot, report and avoid emails that in a real-world scenario might carry malware. The ongoing exercise is helping Krikorian and DNC Chief Information Security Officer Bob Lord learn how often any person in the organization is likely to click a suspicious email attachment. “People have such PTSD about what happened in 2016 that there’s a real desire to improve [security] here,” Krikorian […]
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Senate to review fusion center plan to deter Russian cyberattacks
Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Wednesday they would consider plans offered by a Obama administration official to fight back against Russian aggression in cyberspace. Victoria Nuland, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told lawmakers that it would be pragmatic for the country to consider a new “fusion center” to deter foreign election meddling similar to what occurred in 2016. The approach Nuland described would look like the counter-terrorism model pursued by the U.S. government in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “On the President’s direction and with Congressional support, the Trump Administration could immediately establish a multi-agency Fusion Center, modeled on the National Counter Terrorism Center [(NCTC)] but smaller in size, to pull together all the information and resources of our government to identify, expose and respond to state-sponsored efforts to undermine American democracy through disinformation, cyberattack, and abuse of the internet,” Nuland said. Senior […]
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National labs will probe election tech for vulnerabilities under planned DHS program
The government is currently planning a cybersecurity program that would allow federally funded national scientific laboratories to privately probe and then document security flaws existing in U.S. election technology, most of which is developed and sold by private companies, according to a senior U.S. official. Rob Karas, director of the National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technical Service team at the Homeland Security Department, said that multiple election technology vendors had already shown an interest in engaging on the effort. Karas declined to name the firms, but said the initiative will begin later this summer. The outreach process is still ongoing. It would provide voting-technology companies — hardware and software makers alike — with a free, comprehensive vulnerability assessment report so that they can better understand how their systems might be hacked. This type of information is typically considered valuable as companies look to harden their products. The individual reports will not be made […]
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24 Million Americans Don’t Have Access to Broadband—Why Isn’t It an Election Issue?
It’s rare that the digital divide even gets lip service, let alone a robust platform from candidates. Continue reading 24 Million Americans Don’t Have Access to Broadband—Why Isn’t It an Election Issue?
Alphabet’s Jigsaw offers political campaigns free DDoS protection
U.S. political organizations are now being offered a free tool to defend against distributed denial of service attacks courtesy of Jigsaw, a subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The offer comes after a local election in Knox County, Tennessee, was recently forced to delay the release of voting results after their website was hit by a DDoS attack. Dubbed “Project Shield,” Jigsaw’s defensive software is designed to flag, filter and contain loads of malicious traffic. The tool is built off of Google’s own server architecture and scanning capabilities, making it capable of quickly identifying and blocking IP addresses that are recognized as being part of botnets. The integrated web software was previously available for free to journalists and human rights organizations, among others, but Wednesday’s inclusion of U.S. political organizations opens the door to a massive new user base that is set to include political […]
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