National: Intelligence Contractor Is Charged in First Leak Case Under Trump | The New York Times

An intelligence contractor was charged with sending a classified report about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election to the news media, the Justice Department announced Monday, the first criminal leak case under President Trump. The case showed the department’s willingness to crack down on leaks, as Mr. Trump has called for in complaining that they are undermining his administration. His grievances have contributed to a sometimes tense relationship with the intelligence agencies he now oversees. The Justice Department announced the case against the contractor, Reality Leigh Winner, 25, about an hour after the national-security news outlet The Intercept published the apparent document, a May 5 intelligence report from the National Security Agency. The report described two cyberattacks by Russia’s military intelligence unit, the G.R.U. — one in August against a company that sells voter registration-related software and another, a few days before the election, against 122 local election officials.

National: Who Won the Election? NSA Report Suggests Russia Might Have Hacked Voting System | Newsweek

Russian military intelligence attempted to cyber-attack a U.S. voting software supplier and more than 100 local election officials in the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election, The Intercept reported Monday. While there is no indication that voting machines or the result of the election were tampered with, this is the first report of its type to raise serious questions about whether Russian hackers attempted to breach the voting system. According to an NSA document acquired by The Intercept, Russian military intelligence cyber-attacked a U.S. voting software supplier, using information gained in that attack to “launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.”

Illinois: Congressman: Russian operatives hacked Illinois elections board | Chicago Tribune

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley said Monday that Russian operatives hacked into the State Board of Elections last year to view voter database files, a potential move toward trying to make voters distrust the state and federal election system. Quigley, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, also warned of a potential “constitutional crisis” over executive privilege between President Donald Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court as part of multiple investigations into possible collusion between agents of the Russian government and Trump’s presidential campaign. Quigley’s declaration of Russian involvement in the hacking of the state elections board marked the first time the country had been definitively identified as behind the attack last year, though it had been widely suspected.

National: Susan Rice on Putin’s denials of election meddling: ‘Frankly, he’s lying’ | The Hill

Susan Rice, former President Obama’s national security adviser, on Sunday dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. “Frankly, he’s lying,” Rice said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The reality is — as all of our intelligence agencies have come together to affirm with high confidence — the Russian government at the highest levels was behind the very unprecedented effort to meddle in our 2016 presidential election.” Rice said the country needs to understand how and why that happened. The country also needs to find out whether there is “any evidence to suggest that there were those on the American side who facilitated that meddling,” she said, referring to allegations that members of President Trump’s campaign colluded with Moscow.

National: Trump Appears Unlikely to Hinder Comey’s Testimony About Russia Inquiry | The New York Times

President Trump does not plan to invoke executive privilege to try to prevent James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, from providing potentially damaging testimony to Congress on statements the president made about an investigation into his former national security adviser, two senior administration officials said Friday. Mr. Trump could still move to block the testimony next week, given his history of changing his mind at the last minute about major decisions. But legal experts have said that Mr. Trump has a weak case to invoke executive privilege because he has publicly addressed his conversations with Mr. Comey, and any such move could carry serious political risks. One of the administration officials said Friday evening that Mr. Trump wanted Mr. Comey to testify because the president had nothing to hide and wanted Mr. Comey’s statements to be publicly aired. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a decision that had not been announced.

United Kingdom: Should we worry about election hacking? | IT PRO

With less than a week until the UK General Election takes place, attention is turning towards the danger of cyber criminals or state actors hacking into party, governmental or parliamentary systems, or disrupting the voting system itself. With similar attacks hitting both the US and French presidential elections, such concerns are founded in reality — but does that necessarily mean such an attack is likely? The IT Pro team considers the possibility that our democracy is the next area to be disrupted.

National: Putin says Russian role in election hacking ‘theoretically possible’ | The Guardian

Vladimir Putin has given his broadest hint yet that Russia may have played a role in the hacking of western elections but emphatically denied that his government was involved. Speaking at the St Petersburg economic forum, the Russian president acknowledged that it was “theoretically possible” that “patriotic” Moscow hackers might have interfered in foreign polls. Asked on Thursday if Russia would meddle in Germany’s election later this year, Putin said: “If [hackers] are patriotically minded, they start to make their own contribution to what they believe is the good fight against those who speak badly about Russia. “Is that possible? Theoretically, that’s possible,” he said.

National: Protesters in Washington Demand Independent Russia Inquiry | The New York Times

The March for Truth, the latest in what has become nearly weekly demonstrations of various stripes against the Trump administration, drew a sign-waving crowd to the Washington Monument on Saturday to protest possible collusion between associates of President Trump and Russian officials in the 2016 election. As new revelations have continued to emerge five months into the administration — the latest involving reported efforts by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, to create a secret back channel to Russia — the protest was organized on Twitter under the banner #MarchforTruth. The several dozen demonstrators in Washington said they were demanding a well-staffed, independent commission, removed from the White House’s influence, to investigate the possibility of collusion. They also called for Mr. Trump to release his tax returns, saying the documents could shed light on any connections to Russia.

National: Maybe Private Russian Hackers Meddled in Election, Putin Says | The New York Times

Shifting from his previous blanket denials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suggested on Thursday that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year that meddled in the United States presidential election. While Mr. Putin continued to deny any state role in the hacking, his comments, made to reporters in St. Petersburg, Russia, departed from the Kremlin’s previous position: that Russia had played no role whatsoever in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and that, after Donald J. Trump’s victory, the United States had become the victim of anti-Russia hysteria among crestfallen Democrats. Asked about suspicions that Russia might try to interfere in the coming elections in Germany, Mr. Putin raised the possibility of attacks on foreign votes by what he portrayed as free-spirited Russian patriots. Hackers, he said, “are like artists” who choose their targets depending how they feel “when they wake up in the morning.” Any such attacks, he added, could not alter the result of elections in Europe, America or elsewhere.

National: Putin’s Just Trolling the World Now on Trump and the US Election | The Fiscal Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin conceded for the first time that perhaps computer hackers from his country actually had worked to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. The concession comes as the Trump administration is preparing to restore Russian diplomats’ access to two luxury East Coast vacation properties a few months after the Obama administration took them away as punishment for Russian interference in the election. Speaking to reporters in St. Petersburg, Putin continued to insist that there had been no government-sponsored effort to attack Clinton and the Democratic National Committee — a claim the entire U.S. Intelligence Community rejects. However, he said, “patriotic” Russian hackers might have taken it upon themselves to stand up for their country against someone, as Putin put it, “who say bad things” about it.

France: French cyber security agency says no trace of Russian hacking Macron | Associated Press

The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack. In an interview in his office Thursday with The Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard said the Macron campaign hack “was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone.” He said they found no trace that the Russian hacking group known as APT28, blamed for other attacks including on the U.S. presidential campaign, was responsible.

Russia: Putin Says ‘Patriotic Hackers’ May Have Targeted U.S. Election | The Atlantic

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday his country has “never engaged in” hacking another nation’s elections, but left open the possibility that hackers with “patriotic leanings … may try to add their contribution to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia.” “Hackers are free people, just like artists who wake up in the morning in a good mood and start painting,” Putin told news agencies at a meeting in St. Petersburg, the Associated Press reported. “The hackers are the same, they would wake up, read about something going on in interstate relations and if they have patriotic leanings, they may try to add their contribution to the fight against those who speak badly about Russia.”

United Kingdom: Nigel Farage is ‘person of interest’ in FBI investigation into Trump and Russia | The Guardian

Nigel Farage is a “person of interest” in the US counter-intelligence investigation that is looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the Guardian has been told. Sources with knowledge of the investigation said the former Ukip leader had raised the interest of FBI investigators because of his relationships with individuals connected to both the Trump campaign and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whom Farage visited in March. WikiLeaks published troves of hacked emails last year that damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign and is suspected of having cooperated with Russia through third parties, according to recent congressional testimony by the former CIA director John Brennan, who also said the adamant denials of collusion by Assange and Russia were disingenuous.

National: Trump-Russia probe: House intel committee issues subpoenas | USA Today

The House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas Wednesday for testimony, documents and business records from former national security adviser Michael Flynn and President Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, as part of an investigation into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election. “As part of our ongoing investigation into Russian active measures during the 2016 campaign, today we approved subpoenas for several individuals for testimony, personal documents and business records,” said a joint statement from Reps. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who are leading the House committee’s inquiry. “We hope and expect that anyone called to testify or provide documents will comply with that request, so that we may gain all the information within the scope of our investigation. We will continue to pursue this investigation wherever the facts may lead.”

National: Trump administration moves to return Russian compounds in Maryland and New York | The Washington Post

The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. President Barack Obama said Dec. 29 that the compounds were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and gave Russia 24 hours to vacate them. Separately, Obama expelled from the United States what he said were 35 Russian “intelligence operatives.”

National: Hillary Clinton: Russia Got Help From Americans in Election Meddling | Wall Street Journal

Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said she believes that Russians likely received help from inside the U.S. on how to effectively use the information that intelligence agencies say was gathered to meddle in last year’s presidential election, which she lost to President Donald Trump. “The Russians, in my opinion and based on the intel and counterintel people I’ve talked to, could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided,” said Mrs. Clinton at the Code technology conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. Mrs. Clinton added that the guidance would likely have come from Americans and people with polling and data information.

Australia: Russia risk to elections: police chief | The Australian

The federal police chief says it would be “naive” to dismiss the threat of Russian interference in a future Australian election. AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin will head to the United States soon for talks with his counterparts on counter-terrorism and cyber security. American intelligence and security agencies say there was Russian interference – ranging from the spreading of disinformation to data theft – in the 2016 US presidential elections and 2017 French elections. Mr Colvin said the issue would be on his agenda. “I think we would be ignorant and naive if we didn’t think this is a real threat,” Mr Colvin told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

Russia: Putin echoes Trump, Nunes lines on U.S. Russia investigation | The Hill

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have adopted President Trump’s rhetoric about the ongoing probes on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, calling it “fiction” and accusing the Democrats of inventing the allegations because they are still bitter about losing. The Kremlin leader told Le Figaro, a French newspaper, that the allegations were inspired by the “desire of those who lost the U.S. elections to improve their standing,” The Associated Press reported Tuesday. Putin also repeated his firm denial of Russian involvement with the hacking of members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee — hacks that negatively impacted the Democrats in the election.

Germany: Germany brushes off US help on election cybersecurity: report | The Hill

German intelligence has informed the United States that it is not looking for help staving off the same kind of election hacking attributed to Russia during the U.S. campaign, NBC News reported Tuesday. The refusal is “a sign of the lack of trust that seems to be growing between Germany and the United States,” NBC said. The German election pitting conservative Prime Minister Angela Merkel against her party’s center-left opposition is seen as a potential target for hacking efforts similar to those Russia used against the U.S. last year. The German opposition party, the Social Democrats, were thought to take a far gentler position against Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in the past, though candidate Martin Schulz has warned against the lifting of sanctions.

Australia: Fake news, hacking threat to democracy now on ‘unseen scale’, report says | ABC

The internet and social media pose an unprecedented threat to Australia’s democratic systems and an urgent response is needed to safeguard against attacks, according to a new report. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) report drew on case studies from the US and found technology had enabled malicious foreign forces to potentially influence elections on a “scale and scope previously unseen”. “Two critical elements of the democratic process are under assault,” said the report’s author, Zoe Hawkins. “The security of our election infrastructure — think hacked voting machines — and the integrity of our public debates — think fake news.

National: Top hacker conference to target voting machines | Politico

Hackers will target American voting machines—as a public service, to prove how vulnerable they are. When over 25,000 of them descend on Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas at the end of July for DEFCON, the world’s largest hacking conference, organizers are planning to have waiting what they call “a village” of different opportunities to test how easily voting machines can be manipulated. Some will let people go after the network software remotely, some will be broken apart to let people dig into the hardware, and some will be set up to see how a prepared hacker could fiddle with individual machines on site in a polling place through a combination of physical and virtual attacks.

Malta: Russia accused of cyber-attacks in run-up to election | The Guardian

The embattled Maltese government has claimed that it has come under attack from a Russian-backed campaign to undermine it, amid worsening relations with the Kremlin. Malta assumed the presidency of Europe’s Council of Ministers in January, an important position under which it chairs high-level meetings in Brussels and sets Europe’s political agenda. Since then, the Maltese government’s IT systems have seen a rise in attacks, according to a source working within its information technology agency, a government body. He claimed the attacks, which have increased ahead of next month’s general election, are designed to damage the government. “In the last two quarters of last year and the first part of this year, attacks on our servers have increased,” the source said.

National: Jared Kushner now a focus in Russia investigation | The Washington Post

Investigators are focusing on a series of meetings held by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and an influential White House adviser, as part of their probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and related matters, according to people familiar with the investigation. Kushner, who held meetings in December with the Russian ambassador and a banker from Moscow, is being investigated because of the extent and nature of his interactions with the Russians, the people said. The Washington Post reported last week that a senior White House official close to the president was a significant focus of the high-stakes investigation, though it did not name Kushner.

National: Trump and His Allies Stumble As Russia Probe Moves Closer to the White House | Time

Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy was just trying to help. But as they have for weeks, attempts to defend President Trump against the accelerating investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia just seem to make things worse. At a May 23 House Intelligence Committee hearing into the Russian operation against the 2016 presidential election, Gowdy asked former CIA chief John Brennan, who stepped down on Jan. 20, whether he had seen any “evidence of collusion, coordination [or] conspiracy between Donald Trump and Russian state actors.” If Gowdy thought Brennan was going to distance the President from the spreading scandal, his move backfired. “I saw information and intelligence that was worthy of investigation by the [FBI] to determine whether or not such cooperation or [collusion] was taking place,” Brennan said. When pressed by the retreating Gowdy on whether he meant Trump in particular, Brennan said he wasn’t referring to “any individuals” but wouldn’t rule Trump out, either. The damage was done.

National: Trump lawyer in Russia probes has Russian ties of his own | CNN

The prominent New York lawyer expected to represent President Donald Trump in the widening Russia probes has professional connections of his own to Moscow, which could create yet another public-relations problem for the White House. Marc Kasowitz, who has been Trump’s go-to lawyer for years on both personal and business matters, is defending a Russian bank, OJSC Sberbank, in an ongoing lawsuit in US court. He also represents a company controlled by a Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, who has close ties to the Kremlin. Kasowitz’ clients with Russian ties may not pose any legal conflicts of interests as he prepares to help Trump navigate an investigation that the president calls “a witch hunt.” But the optics of the situation — a lawyer with Russian-linked clients representing a president, whose campaign is being investigated for alleged collusion with Russia — could make a messy situation for Trump even messier.

Malta: The Russian connection and a third inquiry | The Malta Independent

The Russian spy story continued to reverberate on the campaign trail, as Prime Minister Muscat had to deal with the backlash of ridicule that erupted after his announcement that he had received information from two allied secret services that Russia was behind the Egrant saga. In the morning, the Prime Minister once again reiterated what he had said a day earlier, with much less drama, but he would not be drawn into saying whether he believed the story was true or otherwise. And nobody was expecting him to say yes or no. A “yes” would have brought even more disdain, and open up diplomatic issues, and a “no” would have been an admission that the story was nothing more than an attempt to win some sympathy.

National: Top Russian Officials Discussed How to Influence Trump Aides Last Summer | The New York Times

American spies collected information last summer revealing that senior Russian intelligence and political officials were discussing how to exert influence over Donald J. Trump through his advisers, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the intelligence. The conversations focused on Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman at the time, and Michael T. Flynn, a retired general who was advising Mr. Trump, the officials said. Both men had indirect ties to Russian officials, who appeared confident that each could be used to help shape Mr. Trump’s opinions on Russia. Some Russians boasted about how well they knew Mr. Flynn. Others discussed leveraging their ties to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the deposed president of Ukraine living in exile in Russia, who at one time had worked closely with Mr. Manafort.

Malta: Russian red herring for breakfast – Why would Putin want to elect Simon Busuttil? | The Malta Independent

Yesterday will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the more bizarre days in Maltese electoral history. But before delving into the somewhat murky waters of the Prime Minister’s cloak and dagger, and diplomatically dangerous, assertions about Russia’s nefarious interests in Maltese political affairs one central question needs to be asked: why, exactly would Vladimir Putin want to see Simon Busuttil elected? The fact of the matter is that if asked to choose a preferred leader of Malta, Putin would no doubt prefer a Socialist Prime Minister who has over his tenure consistently looked east and courted and sold state assets to countries such as Azerbaijan and China over a Christian Democrat who believes so wholeheartedly in the European project.

National: Ex-CIA chief: Trump staff had enough contact with Russia to justify FBI inquiry | The Guardian

The former CIA director, John Brennan, has said there were enough contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Moscow by last summer to justify further investigation by the FBI. In testimony to the House intelligence committee, Brennan gave the fullest account to date of the scale of the effort to combat Russian operations to affect the outcome of the 2016 elections. He confirmed that the CIA had set up a special group with the NSA and FBI in late July to investigate the extent of Russian intervention in the presidential election. He briefed congressional leaders on the threat and on 4 August he warned Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Russian intelligence agency, FSB, in a telephone call to stop the meddling, telling him it would backfire. Bortnikov told Brennan he would pass on the message to Vladmir Putin.

National: Richard Clarke: Why the journalists, spies, and politicians warned about Trump’s Russia ties couldn’t believe their eyes | Quartz

As the US Congress, the FBI, and newly appointed special counsel Robert Mueller probe the nest of activities around Russian interference in US politics, a lot of people are asking the same question: Why didn’t we know about all of this before the presidential election? If it turns out that there was a major Russian role in the outcome of the election, much of the US media, some members of Congress, and even leaders in the Obama White House may have to admit that they had fair warning. As with so many other disasters, from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to Hurricane Katrina and the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns, a lot of powerful people ignored an expert who very clearly told us what was coming.