National

State and local officials hastened to reassure Americans this week that the nation’s election systems are secure after the country’s top intelligence official accused Iran of sending threatening emails to voters in several states and the United States said Russia obtained voter information from at least one county. U.S. officials and cybersecurity experts said the activity did not appear to include penetration of voting systems or access to voter registration databases, or the hacking of equipment that could be tampered with to alter election results. Arizona’s voter registration database remains secure,” said C. Murphy Hebert, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office in Arizona, one of the states where Democratic voters reported receiving the threatening emails. “Some information in the voter record is publicly available in Arizona through a public record request, including party registration and, up until recently, emails. We are vigilantly monitoring all election systems. ”Federal and state officials said they have fortified election systems since 2016, when Russian hackers scanned election-related websites and software nationwide for vulnerabilities.

National: Russian Hackers Break Into 2 County Systems, Stoking Election Security Fears | Philip Ewing and Miles Parks/NPR

Active Russian cyberattacks are targeting a wide swath of American government networks, including those involved with the ongoing election, federal authorities revealed Thursday. The focus of the effort include “U.S. state, local, territorial, and tribal government networks, as well as aviation networks,” according to a new bulletin from the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.It continued: “As this recent malicious activity has been directed at … government networks, there may be some risk to elections information … However, the FBI and CISA have no evidence to date that integrity of elections data has been compromised. “U.S. officials said separately on Thursday afternoon that systems in two local government jurisdictions had been accessed, granting attackers admission to some limited data about voters.The announcement followed one day after an in-person briefing by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray in which they warned about Russian interference as well as an Iranian scheme to intimidate voters with spoof emails.

National: ‘There is a voter-suppression wing’: An ugly American tradition clouds the 2020 presidential race | James Rainey/Los Angeles Times

A Memphis, Tenn., poll worker turned away people wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts, saying they couldn’t vote. Robocalls warned thousands of Michigan residents that mail-in voting could put their personal information in the hands of debt collectors and police. In Georgia, officials cut polling places by nearly 10%, even as the number of voters surged by nearly 2 million. The long American tradition of threatening voting access — often for Black people and Latinos — has dramatically resurfaced in 2020, this time buttressed by a record-setting wave of litigation and an embattled president whose reelection campaign is built around a strategy of sowing doubt and confusion. Voting rights activists depict the fights against expanding voter access as a last-ditch effort by President Trump and his allies to disenfranchise citizens who tend to favor Democrats. The administration insists — despite no evidence of a widespread problem — that it must enforce restrictions to prevent voter fraud.“We have an incredibly polarized country and we have a political party whose leader thinks it’s to the party’s advantage to make it harder for people to register to vote and to vote,” said Richard L. Hasen, a UC Irvine law professor and authority on voting. “So that is where we are.”

National: When will your ballot be counted in the 2020 election? A look at what goes into the tallying process | Meredith Deliso/ABC

The last day to vote in the 2020 general election is Nov. 3. But ballots may not be counted for several days, if not weeks, after that date, experts said.Due to an anticipated record amount of mail-in voting this election season, combined with ballot counts that won’t start until Election Day in most states, election officials across the country could be overwhelmed in some cases. Deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots also extend past Nov. 3 in several states, all but making it a given that votes will be recorded in the days or even weeks after the election. The issue of mail-in ballot receipt deadlines is also fraught with legal challenges — some of which are still playing out in court with less than two weeks to go until the general election. And President Donald Trump has repeatedly attempted to sow doubt on mail-in voting through false and conspiratorial claims about voter fraud.

National: Native voters struggle amid growing reliance on mail-in voting | Teresa Tomassoni/The Washington Post

Nicole Horseherder lives two miles away from her closest neighbor on the Navajo reservation in Black Mesa, Ariz. She has no mailbox and no street address. The nearest post office requires a 30-mile bumpy ride along unpaved dirt roads.So when Horseherder’s mail-in ballot had not arrived by mid-October, she was worried.“I was seriously thinking I’m not going to receive my ballot,” said Horseherder, who is 50 and head of the Navajo environmental justice nonprofit Tó Nizhóní Ání.Though her ballot eventually did arrive, Horseherder said she is still concerned about her vote being received and counted by Election Day, given coronavirus restrictions have increased reliance on mail-in ballots and exacerbated nationwide U.S. Postal Service delays. Her sentiments are shared by many Indigenous peoples and Native American rights advocates who say those living in isolated areas of reservations with limited transportation were not considered when many states expanded mail-in voting this election season to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. “That shift to all vote-by-mail left Native Americans out of the conversation because vote-by-mail doesn’t work in Indian country,” said Jacqueline De León, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund and an enrolled member of the Isleta Pueblo, a Native American tribe in New Mexico.

National: Voting Disinformation Surges In Election’s Final Weeks | Pam Fessler/NPR

Dirty tricks and disinformation have been used to intimidate and mislead voters for as long as there have been elections. But they have been especially pervasive this year as millions of Americans cast ballots in a chaotic and contentious election.This has led to stepped-up efforts by election officials and voter advocates to counter the disinformation so voters are not discouraged from turning out. “2020 has been a year like no other because not only have we seen a higher volume of online mis- and disinformation, we have also changed a lot of processes about our society, including the way we administer elections,” said Jesse Littlewood, who leads the Stopping Cyber Suppression program for Common Cause. His nonpartisan group has already identified close to 5,000 incidents this year. Littlewood noted that the shift to more mail-in voting because of the pandemic has opened the way for a whole new wave of disinformation. One of the most high-profile cases involved robocalls that went to tens of thousands of minority voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and New York. The calls falsely claimed that voting by mail could be dangerous. “Mail-in voting sounds great,” a woman’s voice warned. “But did you know that if you vote by mail your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit companies to collect outstanding debts?”

National: Russia Created an Election Disinformation Playbook. Here’s How Americans Evolved It. | Isabelle Niu, Kassie Bracken and Alexandra Eaton/The New York Times

A deluge of misinformation is hitting the U.S. elections, and this time election experts are more worried about it coming from Americans.Back in 2016, Kremlin-linked Russian trolls surprised social media companies with an online disinformation campaign. Russian trolls developed an effective playbook — they used a large network of fake accounts to spread incendiary political content to millions of Americans, took advantage of existing divisions in American society and sowed doubt about the election process. In the years since, the U.S. intelligence community, social media companies and the public have become aware of the threat of foreign disinformation campaigns. But America’s election information problem has evolved.“We see that playbook being used by political operatives in the U.S. and we see that same playbook being used by individuals in their basements who are angry and frustrated with life,” said Claire Wardle, the U.S. director of First Draft, a nonprofit organization focused on addressing misinformation and disinformation.Simply put, disinformation is a falsehood created with the intention to cause harm. Misinformation is also false, but created or shared without the intention to deceive others.

National: Russians Who Pose Election Threat Have Hacked Nuclear Plants and Power Grid | Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

Cybersecurity officials watched with growing alarm in September as Russian state hackers started prowling around dozens of American state and local government computer systems just two months before the election. The act itself did not worry them so much — officials anticipated that the Russians who interfered in the 2016 election would be back — but the actor did. The group, known to researchers as “Dragonfly” or “Energetic Bear” for its hackings of the energy sector, was not involved in 2016 election hacking. But it has in the past five years breached the power grid, water treatment facilities and even nuclear power plants, including one in Kansas. It also hacked into Wi-Fi systems at San Francisco International Airport and at least two other West Coast airports in March in an apparent bid to find one unidentified traveler, a demonstration of the hackers’ power and resolve. September’s intrusions marked the first time that researchers caught the group, a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., targeting states and counties. The timing of the attacks so close to the election and the potential for disruption set off concern inside private security firms, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

International election observers in the U.S. consider this year the most challenging ever | Carol Morello/The Washington Post

As the eyes of the world focus on the U.S. election, teams of international observers are heading out across the United States amid concerns about the vote’s integrity.For the ninth time, observers affiliated with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have come to the United States to watch over an election and recommend improvements, a mission little-noticed by most Americans.But the 2020 campaign is different.As fears rise about voter suppression, violence and a potentially contested outcome in the United States, the Europeans say they hope their efforts will help assure Americans the vote is legitimate.“This is one of the most important elections we have ever observed as the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,” said Roberto Montella, secretary general of the group, which will dispatch 59 lawmakers and a staff of 16 to monitor voting in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

Voter Websites In California And Florida Could Be Vulnerable To Hacks, Report Finds | Dina Temple-Raston/NPR

Back in July, two cybersecurity firms sent the Department of Homeland Security a troubling report that described a possible vulnerability in the online voter registration systems in dozens of counties in California and Florida.The report, obtained by NPR, warned that flaws that might have allowed hackers to change a handful of voter registration files four years ago are still likely to exist in some places, and could be used again.A spokesperson for DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, called the report “questionable” and “unverified,” and said the department “takes vulnerability reporting and remediation seriously.”The report comes, however, as Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe announced Wednesday that Russian and Iranian hackers had used some voter registration information in a bid to send misinformation to voters and sow discord ahead of the election. It is unclear if the voter registration websites the report identified as vulnerable were part of the hack Ratcliffe revealed.

National: 12 Cyber Threats That Could Wreak Havoc on the Election | Garrett M. Graff/WIRED

Wednesday night, at a brief, hastily arranged press conference at FBI headquarters, four top US national security officials announced solemnly that they had evidence that two foreign adversaries, Iran and Russia, had obtained US voter data and appeared to be trying to spread disinformation about the election.It was the latest—and most troubling—episode in a week that has seen near-daily events set off potential alarms about how the US will hold up on and approaching Election Day. In the final hours last Tuesday before the voter registration deadline in Virginia, an accidentally cut fiber-optic cable knocked out access to the state registration portal. The next morning, the New York Post published an odd, inconsistent, and poorly sourced story about Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma that reeked of a ham-handed information operation. A day later came an extended outage of Twitter. Neither the Virginia cable cutting nor the Twitter outage was nefarious, though US officials continue to argue over the origins of the Burisma leaks.This week, voters in states like Alaska and Florida began reporting threatening emails, purportedly from the white supremacist group Proud Boys, saying that the targeted Democratic voters should support Donald Trump—or else. National security officials soon confirmed that the emails appeared to originate with Iran—a revelation that led to Wednesday’s press conference.FBI director Christopher Wray used the event to highlight how united and focused the nation’s security leadership is on protecting the election. “We are not going to let our guard down,” Wray said. Yet the emails and other episodes suggest that the presidential election is sure to be filled with more unexpected surprises and tense moments—and served as reminders of the myriad ways that the election could go wrong in the remaining weeks, days, and hours of the campaign.Interviews and conversations with numerous election, law enforcement, and intelligence personnel over the last year have highlighted a dozen specific scenarios that particularly worry them as Election Day nears. The concerns roughly break down into two categories: technical attacks on data or access and online information operations.

National: Election night marks the end of one phase of campaign 2020 – and the start of another | Drew DeSilver/Pew Research Center

On Nov. 3, millions of Americans will trek to their local polling places to cast their ballots for the next president. That evening, after the polls close, they’ll settle down in front of their televisions to watch the returns roll in from across the country. Sometime that night or early the next morning, the networks and wire services will call the race, and Americans will know whether President Donald Trump has won a second term or been ousted by former Vice President Joe Biden. Just about every statement in the previous paragraph is false, misleading or at best lacking important context. Over the years, Americans have gotten used to their election nights coming off like a well-produced game show, with the big reveal coming before bedtime (a few exceptions like the 2000 election notwithstanding). In truth, they’ve never been quite as simple or straightforward as they appeared. And this year, which has already upended so much of what Americans took for granted, seems poised to expose some of the wheezy 18th- and 19th-century mechanisms that still shape the way a president is elected in the 21st century. Here’s our guide to what happens after the polls close on election night. While you may remember some of the details from high school civics class, others were new even to us. Keeping them in mind may help you make sense of what promises to be an election night like no other.

National: House Democrats Renew Calls for Bill Giving Election Assistance Commission More Funding and Responsibility | Courtney Bublé/Government Executive

Following news from intelligence officials on Wednesday evening of foreign election interference attempts, several House lawmakers are renewing their calls for the Senate to take up their massive reform bill that would bolster the funding and responsibilities of the nation’s elections clearinghouse. Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Christopher Wray gave an unexpected press briefing on Wednesday—13 days out from the election—in which they said that Iran and Russia obtained voter registration information in attempts to meddle in U.S. elections. They said that voting remains secure, but House lawmakers renewed the call for the Senate to take up their “2019 For the People Act,” which the chamber passed in March 2019 and has specific provisions to beef up the Election Assistance Commission. Elections in the United States are run by states and localities, but the EAC—along with the FBI, Justice Department and Homeland Security Department—support them and have increasingly done so after the Russian election interference attempts in the 2016 cycle.

National: Overseas voting in U.S. election could double as anxious Americans mail in their ballots | Elizabeth Palmer/CBS News

Nearly 3 million U.S. citizens living overseas are eligible to vote in this year’s presidential election. Already there are clear indications of a massive turnout from these expats, who are taking advantage of a long-established international absentee ballot system — but with some extra anxiety As CBS News senior international correspondent Elizabeth Palmer notes, Americans don’t even have to be on the planet Earth to cast their votes. U.S. astronaut Kate Rubins, who blasted off last week for the International Space Station, will cast her absentee ballot with a little help from NASA Mission Control.”I think it’s really important for everybody to vote, and if we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground, too,” she said. The trend was already headed upward. According to official data from the U.S. Federal Voting Assistance Program, the 2018 midterm elections saw an increase of about 30% in ballots sent from Americans abroad.

‘A lot of chaos’: Trump’s rhetoric, a global pandemic and a tsunami of lawsuits complicate 2020 election | Kristine Phillips/USA Today

By Election Night of 1876, Democratic presidential candidate Samuel Tilden was just one electoral vote away from victory. But returns from four states that could still hand the presidency to his Republican opponent, Rutherford B. Hayes, were in question. Both candidates declared victory, and the dispute dragged on for months. Threats of a civil war loomed. Voter fraud and intimidation ran rampant. Congress was forced to create an electoral commission that would decide the presidency. Voting along party lines, it declared Hayes the winner by just one electoral vote. By the time the country finally had a president, inauguration was just two days away.”It was a violent time,” said Franita Tolson, an election law expert from the University of Southern California. More than 140 years later, the looming chaos of the 2020 presidential race – marred by threats both at home and abroad – harkens back to the ugliest, most antagonistic presidential election in U.S. history.

National: Trump and Biden campaign apps easy targets for cyber criminals | Alex Scroxton/Computer Weekly

US president Donald Trump may seem to believe nobody gets hacked, and that to get hacked you need “someone with 197 IQ” and “about 15% of your password”, but his official campaign app is right now vulnerable to an easy-to-exploit Android vulnerability that could be used to spread misinformation – and his rival Joe Biden fares no better. Trump’s latest false pronouncements, which attracted derision across the industry, prompted researchers at Norwegian mobile security outfit Promon to investigate the US election campaign apps, and during its analysis, it found both Trump’s app and Biden’s are vulnerable to StrandHogg. StrandHogg – an old Norse word for a Viking raiding tactic – was first identified at Promon last year. The vulnerability allows malware to pose as a legitimate application and if successfully exploited on a victim device enables cyber criminals to access SMS messages, photos, account credentials, location data, to make and record phone calls, and to activate on-board cameras and the device’s microphone. StrandHogg 2.0, a more dangerous version, was identified in May 2020.

National: Shouting matches, partisan rallies, guns at polling places: Tensions high at early-voting sites | Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post

During a pro-Trump rally earlier this month in Nevada City, Calif., enthusiastic supporters in cars and trucks crowded into the parking lot of the county government center.As many as 300 people played music, cheered and called out through a megaphone, according to Natalie Adona, a county election official who could see the gathering from her second-floor office at the Eric Rood Administration Center.But unlike usual Trump rallies, this one was happening at the site of one of the most popular drive-up ballot boxes in the county. And early voting was already underway.That afternoon, voters were forced to navigate through the pro-Trump crowd, and some felt the electioneering amounted to voter intimidation. In an election year clouded with anxieties about voter intimidation and the possibility of election-related violence, the first days of early voting have unfolded with dozens of accusations of inappropriate campaigning and possible voter intimidation in at least 14 states. The reports, though anecdotal, illustrate the tensions unfolding as more than 33 million Americans have already cast ballots two weeks before Election Day.

National: Trump’s former homeland security adviser says Russia remains major election hacking threat | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

President Trump’s former homeland security adviser remains seriously concerned that Russia or another U.S. adversary will exploit weaknesses in U.S. election infrastructure to sow chaos or raise doubts about the outcome of the 2020 contest. Tom Bossert, who left the White House in 2018 when John Bolton became national security adviser, worries adversaries could try to change actual vote tallies or corrupt voter registration data and create confusion at polling places.Adversaries might also interfere with state and county systems that report vote tallies to sow mistrust in official results, said Bossert, who is now president of Trinity Cyber.Bossert’s concerns stand in sharp contrast to Trump, who has largely ignored or downplayed the threat of Russian interference in the election, claiming without evidence that a greater threat is posed by domestic fraud from mail ballots. But foreign interference would pay dividends for adversaries including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bossert said — even if it doesn’t result in corrupting the entire election process or delivering a reelection victory to Tump, which U.S. intelligence agencies say Putin prefers.

National: FBI says Russia and Iran have interfered with the US presidential election | Jeremy Herb, Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez and Paul P. Murphy/CNN

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Wednesday both Iran and Russia have obtained US voter registration information in an effort to interfere in the election, including Iran posing as the far-right group Proud Boys to send intimidating emails to voters. Ratcliffe, appearing alongside FBI Director Chris Wray, said at a hastily arranged news conference Wednesday evening that Iran was responsible for the email campaign, made to look like it came from the Proud Boys, as well as spreading disinformation about voter fraud through a video linked in some of the emails.”This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy,” Ratcliffe said. “We have already seen Iran sending spoof emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage President (Donald) Trump,” Ratcliffe added. “You may have seen some reporting on this in the last 24 hours, or you may have even been one of the recipients of those emails.” Ratcliffe did not explain what he meant by his statement that the emails — which were sent to registered voters from “info@officialproudboys.com” and warned recipients to “Vote for Trump or else!” — were intended to damage the President.

National: U.S. government concludes Iran was behind threatening emails sent to Democrats | Ellen Nakashima, Amy Gardner, Isaac Stanley-Becker and Craig Timberg/The Washington Post

The U.S. government has concluded that Iran is behind a series of threatening emails arriving this week in the inboxes of Democratic voters, according to two U.S. officials.Department of Homeland Security officials told state and local election administrators on a call Wednesday that a foreign government was responsible for the online barrage, according to the U.S. officials and state and local authorities who participated in the call, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. A DHS official also said authorities had detected holes in state and local election websites and instructed those participating to patch their online services.The emails claimed to be from the Proud Boys, a far-right group supportive of President Trump, but appeared instead to be a deceptive campaign making use of a vulnerability in the organization’s online network.

National: Hacking federal voting system now a federal crime | Maggie Miller/The Hill

President Trump has signed legislation making it a federal crime to attempt to hack federal voting systems.The Defending the Integrity of Voting Systems Act was unanimously approved by the House last month, over a year after the Senate also unanimously passed the legislation. Trump signed the legislation on Tuesday, just two weeks before the election.The new law empowers the Department of Justice (DOJ) to pursue charges against anyone who attempts to hack a voting system under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, commonly used by the agency to pursue charges against malicious hackers. The bill’s original introduction was the result of a 2018 report compiled by the DOJ’s Cyber Digital Task Force, which evaluated ways the federal government could improve its response to cyber threats. The bipartisan bill was introduced by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) last year.

National: Cybersecurity company finds hacker selling info on 186 million U.S. voters | Ken Dilanian/NBC

A cybersecurity company says it has found a hacker selling personally identifying information of more than 200 million Americans, including the voter registration data of 186 million. The revelation underscored how vulnerable Americans are to email targeting by criminals and foreign adversaries, even as U.S. officials announced that Iran and Russia had obtained voter registration data and email addresses with an eye toward interfering in the 2020 election. Much of the data identified by Trustwave, a global cybersecurity company, is publicly available, and almost all of it is the kind that is regularly bought and sold by legitimate businesses. But the fact that so many names, email addresses, phone numbers and voter registration records were found for sale in bulk on the so-called dark web underscores how easily criminals and foreign adversaries can deploy it as the FBI said Iran has done recently, by sending emails designed to intimidate voters.

National: US Cyber Command Teams With Microsoft To Limit TrickBot Botnet Ahead of Expected Election Interference | Scott Ikeda/CPO Magazine

Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) giant TrickBot, a botnet estimated to be about one to three million computers strong, is the world’s largest of its kind and the biggest distributor of ransomware. Already wreaking havoc on the United States for several years, the US Cyber Command is also expecting it to be involved in election interference attempts ahead of the 2020 vote. Both Cyber Command and Microsoft are actively running persistent operations against the Trickbot botnet in an effort to reduce its capability, and there have been some significant successes. Cyber Command is the Pentagon’s offensive force in cyberspace, engaging in active measures against threat actors. The agency has been tracking TrickBot for some time; it came onto the US government’s radar after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued reports indicating that it was a substantial ransomware threat to state and local IT networks. TrickBot not only poses a threat to the 2020 election, but also is an ongoing potential risk to disrupt critical infrastructure such as patient care facilities, financial institutions and utilities.

National: Cybercriminals Step Up Their Game Ahead of U.S. Elections | Lindsey O’Donnell/Threatpost

With the U.S. presidential elections a mere few weeks away, the security industry is hyper-aware of security vulnerabilities in election infrastructure, cyberattacks against campaign staffers and ongoing disinformation campaigns. Past direct hacking efforts, such as the attack on the Democratic National Committee in 2016, have left many nervous that this time around, the actual election results could be compromised in some way. This year, worries about the integrity of voting machines have popped up too, coupled with the expected expansion of mail-in voting due to COVID-19. Perhaps most concerning, according to Matt Olney, director of Talos’ Threat Intelligence and Interdiction at Cisco, is cybercriminals “going after the minds of the American people and their trust in the democratic institutions that we use to select our leaders. ”The good news, Olney, said in a recent video interview with Threatpost, is that awareness of election-security threats has increased since the 2016 elections. That’s been both on the part of the federal government, as well as by U.S. citizens themselves, who have gotten better at calling out content that may be associated with disinformation campaigns.

National: Mid-October numbers indicate increased turnout of military absentee voters | Karen Jowers/Military Times

Some early statistics indicate this year’s absentee voting turnout among military and overseas citizen voters may far surpass the turnout for the 2016 general election.One indicator of the increased military vote is the 51-percent increase in the overseas absentee ballots returning to the U.S. by the Label 11-DoD express mail tracking system, compared to the same time period in the 2016 general election, from the beginning of September through Oct. 14. The U.S. Postal Service has tracked 36,377 of these ballots entering the U.S. mail stream since the tracking began in September, said USPS spokesman David Coleman. That compares to 24,034 through Oct. 14, 2016.The Label 11-DoD is a free express mail tracking system that is used at military post offices overseas, and is available only to service members and family members. It has been used in federal elections since 2010, and is available starting the beginning of September before the election. About three out of four active duty members in the U.S. and overseas are eligible to vote by absentee ballot because they’re stationed away from their voting residence, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program.

National: As Election Nears, Government and Tech Firms Push Back on Russia (and Trump) | David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth/The New York Times

Over the past two weeks, United States Cyber Command and a group of companies led by Microsoft have engaged in an aggressive campaign against a suspected Russian network that they feared could hold election systems hostage come November.Then, on Monday, the Justice Department indicted members of the same elite Russian military unit that hacked the 2016 election for hacking the French elections, cutting power to Ukraine and sabotaging the opening ceremony at the 2018 Olympics. And in Silicon Valley, tech giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google have been sending out statements every few days advertising how many foreign influence operations they have blocked, all while banning forms of disinformation in ways they never imagined even a year ago.It is all intended to send a clear message that whatever Russia is up to in the last weeks before Election Day, it is no hoax. The goal, both federal officials and corporate executives say, is to disrupt Russia’s well-honed information-warfare systems, whether they are poised to hack election systems, amplify America’s political fissures or get inside the minds of voters.But behind the scenes is a careful dance by members of the Trump administration to counter the president’s own disinformation campaign, one that says the outcome on Nov. 3 will be “rigged” unless he wins.

National: States Have Improved Election Cybersecurity, but Still Can Do More | Phil Goldstein/StateTech Magazine

After more than a year of preparations and security enhancements, state and local governments are entering the final weeks of the 2020 election season. With millions of votes already cast, two things are clear: Government agencies have markedly improved their cybersecurity controls in the wake of the 2016 election, and yet they could still be doing more and cannot let their guards down. Outside experts say that state governments, especially those in battleground states, have improved their cybersecurity protections for election infrastructure and voter data. However, there are still cybersecurity measures they should be taking ahead of Election Day on Nov. 3. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is continuing to coordinate with state and local agencies on election security threats, especially from nation-state actors and cybercriminals. CISA is confident in election security protections that have been put in place but remains on high alert.

National: How US security officials are watching for threats ahead of Election Day | Sean Lyngaas/CyberScoop

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 mail-in ballots, will also have a representative on hand.“It gives us an opportunity to share that information in near-real-time to understand what’s happening…detecting issues at the soonest, smallest opportunity, and then making sure that it doesn’t spiral into a bigger issue,” Krebs said during an interview during CyberTalks, the annual summit produced by CyberScoop.

National: Here’s Why Concerns About Absentee Ballot Fraud Are Overhyped | Whose Vote Counts | Pat Beall, Catharina Felke, Sarah Gelbard, Jackie Hajdenberg, Elizabeth Mulvey and Aseem Shukla/Frontline

Leila and Gary Blake didn’t want to miss elk hunting season. It was 2000, and the election conflicted with their plans, so the Wyoming couple requested absentee ballots.But the Blakes had moved from 372 Curtis Street five miles down the road to 1372 Curtis Street, crossing a town line. When they mailed their votes using the old address, they were criminally charged. The misdemeanor case was settled with $700 in fines and a few months’ probation, but two decades later, the Blakes are still listed as absentee ballot fraudsters in the Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database. Far from being proof of organized, large-scale vote-by-mail fraud, the Heritage database presents misleading and incomplete information that overstates the number of alleged fraud instances and includes cases where no crime was committed, an investigation by USA TODAY, Columbia Journalism Investigations and the PBS series FRONTLINE found. Although the list has been used to warn against a major threat of fraud, a deep look at the cases in the list shows that the vast majority put just a few votes at stake.

National: Activists brace for voter intimidation efforts on election day | Chris Megerian and Arit John/Los Angeles Times