Collaborate Disseminate
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said new rules requiring foreign governments to disclose when they lease broadcast time in the U.S. will increase transparency.
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Ukraine’s top law enforcement agency published a detailed analysis Thursday outing what it says are Russian hackers and “traitors who sided with the enemy” behind a sweeping campaign that began in 2014. The hackers, according to the Security Service of Ukraine, are responsible for more than 5,000 cyberattacks on Ukrainian state entities and critical infrastructure that attempted to “infect” more than 1,500 government computer systems. The report says the Russian intelligence agency the Federal Security Service (FSB) is behind the “Armageddon” group, known more broadly outside Ukrainian borders as Gamaredon or Primitive Bear. It’s distinct from other Russian intelligence and military hacking groups behind attacks on targets around the world, including the infamous hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign ahead of the 2016 elections. Armageddon dates back to 2013 or 2014, the Ukrainian report says, making it “relatively young,” but nevertheless worthy of attention and “able […]
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The European Union formally blamed Russia on Friday, just ahead of this weekend’s German elections, for a hacking campaign targeting EU government officials and politicians. And the EU is threatening to take unspecified action. “The European Union will revert to this issue in upcoming meetings and consider taking further steps,” reads a statement from the high representative of the EU. Known as Ghostwriter, the campaign drawing the EU’s ire has previously taken aim at NATO and launched disinformation efforts as well, according to researchers who have tied its goals to Russian interests but not attributed it to the government. “The European Union and its Member States strongly denounce these malicious cyber activities, which all involved must put to an end immediately,” the EU statement reads. “We urge the Russian Federation to adhere to the norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace.” The EU says that Ghostwriter targets in its member […]
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Less than a week before Election Day in a vital swing state, Wisconsin Republicans said on Thursday that hackers made off with $2.3 million devoted to reelecting President Donald Trump. The Republican Party of Wisconsin said it first detected the attack on Oct. 22, then notified the FBI the following day about doctored invoices in the names of its vendors. “Cybercriminals, using a sophisticated phishing attack, stole funds intended for the re-election of President Trump, altered invoices and committed wire fraud,” the party’s chairman, Andrew Hitt, said in a statement. “These criminals exhibited a level of familiarity with state party operations at the end of the campaign to commit this crime.” It’s common for hacking victims to claim they were the victims of “sophisticated” attacks, whether the attacks were rudimentary or not. Hitt and a party spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions seeking further details, including any evidence the […]
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The European Union on Thursday sanctioned the head of a Russian military intelligence unit, an alleged hacker wanted by the FBI and a Russian government-linked hacking group over a 2015 cyberattack against Germany’s parliament. It’s only the second time the EU has issued cyber-related sanctions, following July sanctions against Russia, China and North Korea in connection with a string of unrelated cyberattacks. Now, as then, the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, commonly known as the GRU, is among the targets of the EU’s ire. Igor Kostyukov, head of the GRU, was hit with sanctions in Thursday’s action over the Bundestag hack. So, too, was alleged intelligence officer Dmitry Badin, previously indicted in the U.S. for his role in 2016 election interference. The EU also sanctioned the GRU-connected hacking group known as Fancy Bear, among other names, which the U.S. has likewise connected to 2016 election meddling. “The cyber-attack against the German federal parliament targeted the parliament’s information […]
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FBI Director Christopher Wray once called the 2018 midterm elections a “dress rehearsal for the big show” of protecting the 2020 presidential election from foreign interference. The big show is finally here, and American officials say they are pulling out all the stops to keep it secure. U.S. intelligence, law enforcement and national security agencies have for weeks been in an “enhanced operational posture” to share any election-related threats with state and local officials, said Chris Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The week before Election Day, which is Nov. 3, those security efforts will kick into overdrive. Officials from the Department of Defense, FBI, the Election Assistance Commission, political campaigns and the private sector are scheduled to gather at CISA’s operations center outside of Washington, D.C. The U.S. Postal Service, which is playing an expanded role in this year’s election with the increase in […]
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The Russian government will continue to use its media mouthpieces to attack mail-in voting and sow divisions among voters just weeks before the U.S. election, the Department of Homeland Security warned state and local election officials on Thursday. “We assess that Russia is likely to continue amplifying criticism of vote-by-mail and shifting voting processes amidst the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine public trust in the electoral process,” reads a DHS bulletin, which CyberScoop reviewed. “Since at least March 2020, Russian malign influence actors have been amplifying allegations of election integrity issues in new voting processes and vote-by-mail programs,” the memo says. Moscow’s reported denigration of the vote-by-mail process mirrors the criticisms leveled by President Donald Trump, who for weeks has baselessly claimed that mail-in voting can lead to widespread fraud. In reality, mail-in ballot fraud is exceptionally rare. On Wednesday, Trump suggested that voters should try voting twice in North Carolina, […]
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President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager was closely tied to a person the United States considers a Russian intelligence officer, and may have been involved in the Russian hack-and-leak operation targeting Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a bipartisan report released Tuesday. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, hired Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national and Ukrainian political operative, years ago to manage his consulting office in Ukraine, and had been working with Manafort since the mid-2000s, according to the Department of Justice. But while Special Counsel Robert Mueller previously said Kilimnik had “ties” to Russian intelligence, the bipartisan report identifies him as a Russian intelligence officer, and alleges that he has a possible connection to the Russian military’s hacking-and-dump scheme targeting Clinton and the Democratic National Committee in 2016. “Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” states the committee’s fifth report, the final installment of the committee’s investigation into Russian election interference in 2016. “Kilimnik may have been […]
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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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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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