National

National: DHS is pushing cybersecurity support to presidential campaigns | The Washington Post

The Department of Homeland Security is offering to help test and improve the cybersecurity of Democratic presidential campaigns — and this time, these services are getting a lot of interest. “We haven’t had anyone decline to have a call with us or not be excited about the resources we’re offering or the support or services,” DHS senior adviser on election security Matt Masterson said of offers to the crowded field of 2020 candidates, during a panel discussion at the Atlantic Council’s International Conference on Cyber Engagement. That’s a far better reception than ahead of the 2018 midterms, when state election officials broadly rejected DHS’s offer to help with their cybersecurity early in the Trump administration. Despite the Russian hacking and influence operation that upended the presidential election, state officials were concerned DHS aid could lead to a federal takeover of election administration and were angered by the department’s slow pace sharing information about Russia’s 2016 hacking attempts. It was well into 2017 before some states changed their tune and began working with DHS on girding their election systems against hacking from Russia and elsewhere in the midterm elections. Now, the acceptance of free help from DHS is a sign the campaigns and states are getting on the same page as the federal government about the need for security to protect both voter information and the integrity of the vote.

National: Cybersecurity proposal pits cyber pros against campaign finance hawks | The Washington Post

The Federal Election Commission could decide today whether nonpartisan groups can offer political campaigns free cybersecurity services, an issue that has made bedfellows of Republicans and Democrats but divided cyber pros and campaign finance hawks. The proposal’s authors, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager Robby Mook and Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager Matt Rhoades, come to the issue from bitter experience. The Romney campaign was targeted by Chinese hackers, and Clinton’s campaign was upended by a Russian hacking and disinformation operation aimed at helping  Donald Trump. The bipartisan duo want to help presidential and congressional campaigns steer clear of similar hacking operations by allowing nonprofits to provide cybersecurity free of charge. But first they need the FEC to say those services don’t amount to an illegal campaign contribution. “This is warfare,” Mook told FEC commissioners during a review of the proposal April 11. “People are trying to disrupt our democracy.” The plan is a hit with many cybersecurity pros who say campaigns aren’t equipped to defend themselves against sophisticated, government-backed hacking operations from Russia and China, and think this might level the playing field. 

National: Managing unknown risks in the next election | GCN

As the nation heads into the 2020 election cycle, experts disagree over whether the nation should expect the same type of cyber threats and influence campaigns experienced in 2016 or if we should expect the unexpected. Matthew Masterson, a senior advisor at the Department of Homeland Security focusing on election security, said that he spends “a lot of time thinking through that undermining confidence [angle] and ways that we can build that resilience.” Speaking at an April 23 cybersecurity conference, he told the audience that “the reality is you don’t actually even have to touch a system to push a narrative that undermines confidence in the elections process.” Liisa Past, former chief research officer at the Cyber Security Branch of the Estonian Information System Authority, said at the same event that election influence campaigns operate on multiple fronts. “It really illustrates the adversarial activity, which is that they’re throwing spaghetti at the walls,” said Past. “Cyber is one wall, misinformation, disinformation and social media is another wall. We’re having to assume that using proxies and … useful idiots is another wall, and I’m afraid that behind it there might also be an element of blackmail and personal manipulation.” The challenge, she said, is “how do you come up with a risk management model that clearly has the same degree of flexibility as the adversary’s tactics have?”

National: In Push for 2020 Election Security, Top Official Was Warned: Don’t Tell Trump | The New York Times

In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election. President Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president. Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids. But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Mr. Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mr. Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.” Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Ms. Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections. As a result, the issue did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command. And it meant that many Americans remain unaware of the latest versions of Russian interference.

National: Election security offers leading edge in CISA’s funding push as budget hearings approach | InsideCyberSecurity

Leaders of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency argue that ensuring the security of the 2020 election will require increased funds for the new agency, and are citing the recent Mueller report as new evidence of CISA’s critical role in countering Russian interference. The Mueller report released last week, and renewed CISA assertions about election security, come as House lawmakers kick off review of the DHS budget for fiscal 2020 next week. CISA Director Christopher Krebs said the redacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian interference reinforces ongoing concerns about election security, while he emphasized that CISA will continue asking for more funding in this area. “When I look at the Mueller report, I think it’s an extension of prior law enforcement intelligence activity, it was pretty consistent with the intelligence community assessment,” Krebs said to Inside Cybersecurity following his speech at the AFCEA meeting of government and largely defense industry officials today. “It’s just a reinforcement that they were incredibly active in 2016, they were active in 2018, and we’re going to be ready for them in 2020,” Krebs said.

National: Mueller report: Russia hacked state databases and voting machine companies | Roll Call

The Russian military intelligence unit known by its initials GRU targeted U.S. state election offices as well as U.S. makers of voting machines, according to Mueller’s report. Victims of the Russian hacking operation “included U.S. state and local entities, such as state boards of elections (SBOEs), secretaries of state, and county governments, as well as individuals who worked for those entities,” the report said. “The GRU also targeted private technology firms responsible for manufacturing and administering election-related software and hardware, such as voter registration software and electronic polling stations.” The Russian intelligence officers at GRU exploited known vulnerabilities on websites of state and local election offices by injecting malicious SQL code on such websites that then ran commands on underlying databases to extract information. Using those techniques in June 2016, “the GRU compromised the computer network of the Illinois State Board of Elections by exploiting a vulnerability in the SBOE’s website,” the report said. “The GRU then gained access to a database containing information on millions of registered Illinois voters, and extracted data related to thousands of U.S. voters before the malicious activity was identified.”

National: Threats known and unknown loom in 2020 elections | FCW

U.S. cybersecurity officials are gearing up to prevent foreign malign influence campaigns from impacting the 2020 vote. Experts are divided over whether local election officials and federal agencies should expect the same type of threats targeting election infrastructure and online discourse as they experienced in 2016 or if they should expect the unexpected. On Election Day in 2018, federal officials said they had no indication that voting infrastructure was successfully targeted by cyberattacks or other efforts at manipulation designed to strike voters from the rolls, change vote counts or hinder officials from completing election tallies. But the issue of influence campaigns and as yet unknown vectors of attack remain ripe for discussion as the nation heads into the 2020 vote. Matthew Masterson, a senior advisor at DHS who focuses on election security, said at an April 23 cybersecurity conference that he spends “a lot of time thinking through that undermining confidence [angle] and ways that we can build that resilience, because the reality is you don’t actually even have to touch a system to push a narrative that undermines confidence in the elections process.” Liisa Past, former Chief Research Officer at the Cyber Security Branch of the Estonian Information System Authority, said at the same event that election influence campaigns operate on multiple fronts.

National: Mueller report highlights scope of election security challenge | The Washington Post

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the “sweeping and systematic fashion” in which Russia interfered in the 2016 election highlights the breadth and complexity of the U.S. voting infrastructure that needs protecting. From voter registration to the vote itself to election night tabulation, there are countless computers and databases that offer avenues for foreign adversaries to try to create havoc and undermine trust in the democratic process. In addition to targeting the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign in 2016, Mueller noted in his report, Russian hackers also went after election technology firms and county officials who administer the vote — officials often without the resources to hire information technology staffs. [Through email leaks and propaganda, Russians sought to elect Trump, Mueller finds] “The Mueller report makes clear that there’s a much larger infrastructure that we have to protect,” said Lawrence Norden, an election security expert at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s clearly a lot to do before 2020.”

National: Cyber aspects of Mueller report tread familiar ground on ’16 election hacks | InsideCyberSecurity

The redacted Mueller report on Russia and the 2016 elections contains politically contentious elements on collusion and obstruction of justice, but the aspects directly related to cybersecurity largely have been released and absorbed through earlier reports and indictments. The document released Thursday by the Justice Department is in a format that’s not searchable, but there are parts on cyber issues such as botnets, which is heavily redacted, and lengthy discussion of what Russian agents did to hack into computers associated with the presidential campaign of Democrat Hillary Clinton. The basic cybersecurity issues involved have been known for some time and were reflected in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s election-security recommendations issued in March 2018. Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) said Thursday that final reports from his committee’s Russia probe will begin coming out in a matter of “weeks.”

National: 2020 Campaigns Are Still Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks | Time

Most Americans aren’t yet paying a lot of attention to the 2020 presidential campaign. The same can’t be said for Russian spies. Aides and advisers to the vast field of Democratic hopefuls are ringing alarm bells, telling their bosses they should assume that Moscow is laying the groundwork to disrupt, if not derail, their campaigns, just as Russian intelligence did to Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. But interviews with the campaigns show cyber security is a secondary concern, with most of the campaigns contacted by TIME say they have not “finalized” their tech plan or hired a security chief. The biggest problem is money. Every campaign focuses vast amounts of effort raising money to compete on ground troops, ads and campaign offices in key locations. Spending precious cash on cyber tools, whose successful deployment results in a non-event, is hard to defend. “There’s nothing sexy about it,” says Mike Sager, the chief technology officer at EMILY’s List, a group that works to elect women who support abortion rights. But, he says, “the folks who have been through it, who know what happens when you don’t do this, get it.” Nobody disputes the threat. Russia’s larger goals remain the same as they were in 2016: making American democracy look bad. “It is about the legitimacy of democracy and about the trust people have in their democracy,” said Eric Rosenbach, a former Pentagon chief of staff who now heads Harvard’s Defending Digital Democracy program. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of different ways in the information age that bad actors and nefarious nation-states can undermine that.”

National: Democrats Urge Judge Not to Dismiss Russian Hacking Suit | Bloomberg

While much of the U.S. was poring over the Mueller Report, the Democratic National Committee argued Thursday that its civil suit against President Donald Trump, the Russian Federation, WikiLeaks and members of the Trump campaign and White House should go forward. The DNC claims the defendants violated U.S. racketeering, computer fraud and other laws by conspiring to hack emails from DNC computers and leak them in advance of the 2016 election in a “brazen attack on American democracy.” The conspiracy sought to help Trump become president and continued into his presidency, according to the DNC. “After securing Trump’s grip on power, defendants worked tirelessly to keep it, lying to the American public, Congress, the Justice Department and the FBI to conceal any misconduct that jeopardized Trump’s presidency,” the DNC said in court papers filed late Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

National: Mueller report is a reminder that Russian hack hit House races, too | Roll Call

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report provided new details Thursday about how Russian agents hacked into Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee computers in 2016, renewing the question of whether the two parties would agree not to use stolen material in future political attacks. Leaders of the DCCC and the National Republican Congressional Committee came close to such an an agreement in late 2018, but talks broke down. The two committees, which have new leaders for the 2020 cycle, have not restarted discussions. The DCCC is interested in re-engaging in talks, according to a source familiar with the committee’s thinking. The NRCC declined to comment. The group’s new chairman, Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, was more focused Thursday on attacking the politics of investigating President Donald Trump. “It is time for the emotional, socialist Democrats to knock it off with their childish temper tantrums, accept reality and get back to work,” he said in a statement. DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos could not be reached immediately for comment.

National: Mueller Report Raises New Questions About Russia’s Hacking Targets In 2016 | NPR

While the headlines about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report have focused on the question of whether President Trump obstructed justice, the report also gave fresh details about Russian efforts to hack into U.S. election systems. In particular, the report said, “We understand the FBI believes that this operation enabled [Russian military intelligence] to gain access to the network of at least one Florida county government” during the 2016 campaign. That came as news to Paul Lux, president of the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections — which has been working closely with federal authorities to protect their election systems against such attacks. “I haven’t heard even a whisper” about such a breach, Lux told NPR, noting that the report referred to a county “government” office network, not specifically to an “elections” office, although the two are frequently connected. It’s unusual that such a breach would occur and Florida officials would not know about it. For the past two years, election officials around the country have been working with both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to share information about potential security threats. They have set up several national communications networks specifically for that purpose.

National: House Homeland Committee wants more cyber funding for DHS | FCW

Twenty-eight members of the House Homeland Security Committee are urging appropriators to boost cyber funding at the Department of Homeland Security above what the White House has requested. In a letter sent to the House Appropriations Committee, the signatories — including Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and ranking member Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — asked for a raise in the spending cap for DHS cyber spending, saying years of flat funding levels at the department will not be enough to “properly resource” the newly established Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and its mission. “We urge the committee to break from the status quo and increase the Homeland Security Subcommittee’s 302(b) allocation commensurate with the threat,” the members wrote. “It is imperative that [the allocation] enable CISA to mature and grow the services it provides to secure federal and critical infrastructure networks.” The letter cited increasing threats to federal data, election infrastructure, critical infrastructure sectors and “long-standing threats from nation-states, terrorists, transnational criminal organizations and other malicious actors” to justify an elevation in funding. Members highlighted how past funding increases have helped DHS and CISA expand their services to state and local governments to secure election and voting systems and incorporate additional federal agencies into cybersecurity programs like Einstein and Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation.

National: How Will Cybersecurity Influence the 2020 US Election Cycle? | HeadStuff

The air is undeniably tense surrounding the next United States presidential race. Not only does the Land of the Free currently have one of the most controversial commanders-in-chief in its history, but the issues at stake are being approached from more partisan, polarised angles than ever before. Whether it’s women’s rights, the tax plan, or guns and public health, you cannot deny the stiff atmosphere in politics today. There’s a topic that’s become a bigger issue than it was four years ago, however: data protection. Cybersecurity is already a hot topic in the media. Of course, data security was previously a concern to the people who knew a thing or two about it, but the public was largely focused on other issues. But now, cybersecurity has become a public cause of concern. With the emerging news in the last few years about Russia’s attempts to tamper with the 2016 election, the American people are skeptical like never before. This begs a few questions: What role is cybersecurity going to play in our upcoming presidential debates? How will it be discussed in the media? And how will the public come down on these important issues?

National: Feds say Russian 2016 election meddling spanned all US states | Naked Security

A multi-agency report has strengthened claims that Russia meddled with election systems in all 50 US states during the last presidential race. The report is called a joint intelligence bulletin (JIB), and it comes from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. It is an unclassified document intended for internal distribution to state and local authorities. Intelligence newsletter OODA Loop reports that the JIB reveals stronger evidence of Russian interference. Agencies believe that Russian agents targeted more than the 21 states initially suspected. According to the bulletin:

Russian cyber actors in the summer of 2016 conducted online research and reconnaissance to identify vulnerable databases, usernames, and passwords in webpages of a broader number of state and local websites than previously identified, bringing the number of states known to be researched by Russian actors to greater than 40.

Although there are some gaps in the data, the bulletin claims “moderate confidence” that Russia conducted “at least reconnaissance” against all US states because its research was so methodical, it added.

National: DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016 | Ars Technica

A joint intelligence bulletin (JIB) has been issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to state and local authorities regarding Russian hacking activities during the 2016 presidential election. While the bulletin contains no new technical information, it is the first official report to confirm that the Russian reconnaissance and hacking efforts in advance of the election went well beyond the 21 states confirmed in previous reports. As reported by the intelligence newsletter OODA Loop, the JIB stated that, while the FBI and DHS “previously observed suspicious or malicious cyber activity against government networks in 21 states that we assessed was a Russian campaign seeking vulnerabilities and access to election infrastructure,” new information obtained by the agencies “indicates that Russian government cyber actors engaged in research on—as well as direct visits to—election websites and networks in the majority of US states.” While not providing specific details, the bulletin continued, “The FBI and DHS assess that Russian government cyber actors probably conducted research and reconnaissance against all US states’ election networks leading up to the 2016 Presidential elections.” DHS-FBI JIBs are unclassified documents, but they’re usually marked “FOUO” (for official use only) and are shared through the DHS’ state and major metropolitan Fusion Centers with state and local authorities. The details within the report are mostly well-known. “The information contained in this bulletin is consistent with what we have said publicly and what we have briefed to election officials on multiple occasions,” a DHS spokesperson told Ars. “We assume the Russian government researched and in some cases targeted election infrastructure in all 50 states in an attempt to sow discord and influence the 2016 election.”

National: Comey Says Trump’s Silence Invites Another Russia Election Hack | Bloomberg

Former FBI Director James Comey said the U.S. remains unprepared for another attack on its elections and faulted the attorney general for suggesting that the government was “spying” on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Echoing the findings of U.S. intelligence agencies, Comey said Russia intervened in the 2016 election to damage American democracy, undermine Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and bolster Trump. Russian officials have denied the accusations. But Comey said Trump’s “denial of a fundamental attack” on the U.S. means “we’re inviting it to happen again with our president’s silence.” The former FBI leader also said he was concerned by Attorney General William Barr’s comments on Wednesday that he’s starting his own inquiry into counterintelligence decisions that may have amounted to political espionage, including actions taken during the Russia probe in 2016. “I really don’t know what he’s talking about when he talks about spying on the campaign,” Comey said. “The FBI and Department of Justice conduct court-ordered surveillance. If the attorney general has come to the belief that that should be called spying, wow, that’s going to inspire a whole lot of conversations in the Department of Justice.”