Tag Archives: election cybersecurity

Democrats are calling for an independent investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election following the news that President Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. The White House announced Comey’s dismissal on Tuesday evening. So far, reaction in Congress to Comey’s removal has split along partisan lines. Some high-ranking Republican lawmakers appeared supportive of the president’s decision to dismiss the head of the nation’s top law enforcement agency, which has been investigating potential connections between the Trump campaign and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. A number of Democrats, on the other hand, expressed shock and outrage over the dismissal, renewing calls for an independent investigation into the matter. Comey’s exit raises questions about the future of the FBI’s politically charged investigation into the 2016 election, since Trump has the power to nominate the director’s replacement, and thus the official charged with overseeing that inquiry.

National: ‘Terrifying, Nixonian’: Comey’s firing takes democracy to dark new territory | The Guardian

Donald Trump’s decision to fire the FBI director, James Comey, who was investigating links between the president’s associates and the Russian government, has taken US democracy into dark and dangerous new territory. That was the assessment of Democratic leaders, legal observers and security experts last night, with some drawing direct comparisons to Watergate and tinpot dictatorships. FBI directors are given 10-year terms in office, precisely to insulate them from politics. It is very rare to fire them. The last time it happened was 24 years ago, when Bill Clinton sacked William Sessions, who had clung to office despite a damning internal ethics report detailing abuse of office, including the use of an FBI plane for family trips. Comey’s sacking has taken place in very different circumstances. It came on a night when CNN reported that a grand jury had issued subpoenas in the investigation of the Trump camp’s contacts with Russian officials, and after had confirmed to Congress that more than one person connected to the Trump campaign was the subject of an FBI counter-intelligence investigation. He had also indicated that he was investigating leaks from inside the FBI to the Trump campaign in the course of the election.

National: Trump Fires FBI Director Comey Amid Russia Meddling Inquiry | Bloomberg

President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey amid the agency’s investigation of Russian interference in last year’s election, saying the bureau needed new leadership to restore “public trust and confidence.” Trump’s decision Tuesday means that he will get to nominate Comey’s successor while the agency is deep into the Russia inquiry, including whether any of Trump’s associates colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. Democrats condemned Comey’s dismissal, calling it an effort to cut short the Russia probe and demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor to carry it forward. According to the White House, though, it wasn’t the Russia investigation that led to Comey’s dismissal. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Comey was fired because of his handling of the probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server — even though the facts of that inquiry were well-known at the time Trump took office and asked Comey to stay on the job.

National: Grand jury subpoenas issued in FBI’s Russia investigation | CNN

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year’s election, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey. The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI’s broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia. The subpoenas issued in recent weeks by the US Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia, were received by associates who worked with Flynn on contracts after he was forced out as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014, according to the people familiar with the investigation. Robert Kelner, an attorney for Flynn, declined to comment. The US Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, the Justice Department and the FBI also declined to comment.

Editorials: Donald Trump’s Firing of James Comey | The New York Times

The American people — not to mention the credibility of the world’s oldest democracy — require a thorough, impartial investigation into the extent of Russia’s meddling with the 2016 presidential election on behalf of Donald Trump and, crucially, whether high-ranking members of Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded in that effort. By firing the F.B.I. director, James Comey, late Tuesday afternoon, President Trump has cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in the country’s history. The explanation for this shocking move — that Mr. Comey’s bungling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server violated longstanding Justice Department policy and profoundly damaged public trust in the agency — is impossible to take at face value. Certainly Mr. Comey deserves all the criticism heaped upon him for his repeated missteps in that case, but just as certainly, that’s not the reason Mr. Trump fired him.

France: The NSA Confirms It: Russia Hacked French Election ‘Infrastructure’ | WIRED

Two days before France’s recent presidential election, hackers leaked nine gigabytes of emails from candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign onto the web. Since then, the Kremlin has once again emerged as the likeliest culprit. But while public evidence can’t definitively prove Russia’s involvement, NSA director Michael Rogers suggested to Congress today that America’s most powerful cybersecurity agency has pinned at least some electoral interference on Moscow. In a hearing of the Senate’s Armed Forces Committee, Rogers indicated that the NSA had warned French cybersecurity officials ahead of the country’s presidential runoff that Russian hackers had compromised some elements of the election. For skeptics, that statement may help tip the balance towards credibly blaming Russia for the attacks.

Russia: French Voters Defy Putin’s Meddling, but You’d Hardly Know It in Russia | The New York Times

The official tone from the Kremlin on Monday, the day after the pro-Europe Emmanuel Macron was elected France’s president, was that Russia can work with anybody. But the snow falling on Moscow was perhaps more reflective of the damp chill in the Kremlin’s relations with Europe after yet another fruitless attempt to influence an election abroad. For the last three years, since Europe slapped sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, the Kremlin has sought to undermine and weaken the Western, trans-Atlantic alliance arrayed against it. Elections in particular have been viewed as a prime moment to try to exploit Western weakness — and openness — to help bring to power leaders more sympathetic to Russia.

National: James Clapper: Russia Is ‘Emboldened’ to Interfere in Elections After 2016 | Associated Press

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Russia is now “emboldened” to interfere in elections in the U.S. and around the world. Clapper testified Monday before a Senate judiciary subcommittee about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. He says Russia’s meddling in last year’s U.S. presidential election amounted to a “high-water mark” in its decades-long efforts to interfere in political contests. Clapper says he hopes Americans recognize the severity of the threat posed by Russia and that the U.S. moves to counter Moscow before it “further erodes the fabric of our democracy.”

National: Sally Yates Tells Senators She Warned Trump About Michael Flynn | The New York Times

Less than a week into the Trump administration, Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, hurried to the White House with an urgent concern. The president’s national security adviser, she said, had lied to the vice president about his Russian contacts and was vulnerable to blackmail by Moscow. “We wanted to tell the White House as quickly as possible,” Ms. Yates told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Monday. “To state the obvious: You don’t want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians.” But President Trump did not immediately fire the adviser, Michael T. Flynn, over the apparent lie or the susceptibility to blackmail. Instead, Mr. Flynn remained in office for 18 more days. Only after the news of his false statements broke publicly did he lose his job on Feb. 13.

Illinois: Voter Registration Database Hackers Home in on Galesburg Residents | Government Technology

Hackers viewed the information of more than 14,000 Galesburg residents in the state of Illinois’ voter registration database last year — more than any other Illinois location. Staff from the Illinois State Board of Elections provided an update to the Illinois Senate’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity on Thursday, revealing that in last summer’s cyberattack on the state’s database, Galesburg records had been viewed more than those from elsewhere in Illinois. Kyle Thomas, executive director of the board, and Kevin Turner, IT director for the board, said the board sent letters to 14,121 Galesburg residents last fall to notify them that some aspect of their information had been viewed. The hacked information included names, birth dates, addresses, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of social security numbers.

France: Election Hacks Are Beginning to Look Like the New Normal | MIT Technology Review

French citizens have elected the centrist Emmanuel Macron as president, despite an unwelcome last-minute leak of his campaign’s documents over the Internet. Late Friday evening, Macron found thousands of files and e-mails relating to his campaign, totaling at least nine gigabytes, shared online. Just ahead of the country’s midnight campaigning cutoff, Macron’s En Marche! team had time to alert the public to the fact that the document dump was the result of a hack, and took the opportunity to implore media organizations to report on the news responsibly. As CNBC points out, French law bans the media from covering the election in the run-up to voting, which means that domestic publications had little chance to run the story. That didn’t stop bots on Twitter, though, which appear to have been widely circulating links during the weekend.

National: Sally Yates to testify about her discussions with the White House on Russia | The Washington Post

Sally Yates was the attorney general for only 10 days — an Obama administration holdover whose role was to quietly manage the Justice Department until the Trump administration could quickly replace her. Instead, her brief time in the job has fueled months of fierce political debate on the White House and Russia. On Monday, Yates is to testify before a Senate subcommittee about her discussions with the White House, testimony that was delayed for more than a month after a previously scheduled appearance before a House committee was canceled amid a legal dispute over whether she would even be allowed to discuss the subject.

National: After promising to cooperate, ex-Trump adviser Carter Page turns inquiry back on Senate panel | The Washington Post

Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser whose interactions with Russia are under FBI investigation, has repeatedly said he wants to cooperate with Congress’s Russia probes to clear his name. But in a letter this week to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Page appeared to initially duck specific questions regarding his interactions with Russian officials, suggesting that the panel seek that information from inside the U.S. government instead. In an email to The Post, Page characterized the letter as a “preliminary response” to a Senate request that he begin providing detailed information no later than May 9, leaving open the possibility he will release more information to the committee in coming days. But he titled the letter a response to “request for even more irrelevant data” and asked that the committee first release to him information the government has collected through surveillance “as a starting point.”

National: Senate Asks Trump Associates for Records of Communication With Russians | The New York Times

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked a number of high-profile Trump campaign associates to hand over emails and other records of dealings with Russians as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election and is prepared to subpoena those who refuse to cooperate, officials said. The requests for the materials were made in letters sent by the committee in the past 10 days, said two officials with knowledge of the contents of the letters. The move is designed to accelerate the committee’s investigation, and represents a new bipartisan challenge to the Trump administration, which has sought to use Republican allies in Congress to blunt the inquiries.

Illinois: Election Hack Hit 80,000 Illinois Voters | NPR

The State Board of Elections says hackers gained access to the information of 80,000 Illinois voters — including their social security numbers and driver’s licenses. Elections officials say hackers had access to Illinois’ system for nearly three weeks before they were detected. They did get access to personal information, but officials say that’s about it. “I don’t know why they selected Illinois. Perhaps they tried other states and weren’t able to get in, they just happened to find the hole in our dike, so to speak,” said State Board of Elections IT Director Kevin Turner. Turner says they’ve added security measures to prevent a similar data breach.

International: Around the World in Election Interference | The Atlantic

All politics may be local, but foreigners still like to have their say in their friends’ and adversaries’ elections. Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential election is the most famous case, but it’s long been popular for countries to put their thumbs on the scale of others’ votes—and for politicians to make strawmen out of the specters of foreign meddling. In several major elections coming up in the next two months, the power of outside parties is playing a big role. Here are four stories of the foreign mixing with the domestic.

Europe: Britain, Germany brace for pre-election cyber attacks | AFP

Britain and Germany were already beefing up cyber security ahead of key elections even before the hacking attack on France’s Emmanuel Macron, months after Hillary Clinton was caught in the online crosshairs.Clinton recently reiterated her view that Russian hacking of her campaign’s emails was partly to blame for her defeat in last year’s US presidential election to Donald Trump. “If the election had been on October 27, I’d be your president,” the defeated Democratic candidate told a charity luncheon last Tuesday. In France, going to the polls today in a presidential run-off election between Macron and far-right Marine Le Pen, hacking reared its ugly head at the 11th hour. Shortly before midnight Friday, front-runner Macron was the victim of a “massive and coordinated hacking attack”.

France: As France becomes latest target, are election hacks the new normal? | The Guardian

The mass document dump looks likely to become an inevitable part of modern elections. After the hacking of the Democratic party in the 2016 US election and the dumping of embarrassing emails through WikiLeaks, French and German governments have been braced for similar attacks during their own elections. And the onslaught has duly arrived. On Friday night, tens of thousands of internal emails and other documents from the campaign of the French presidential frontrunner, Emmanuel Macron, were released online. Gerard Araud, the French ambassador to Washington who witnessed the assault on the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 US presidential election, responded to the Macron attack with weary resignation.

France: Macron claims massive hack as emails leaked | Reuters

Leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign said on Friday it had been the target of a “massive” computer hack that dumped its campaign emails online 1-1/2 days before voters choose between the centrist and his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen. Macron, who is seen as the frontrunner in an election billed as the most important in France in decades, extended his lead over Le Pen in polls on Friday. As much as 9 gigabytes of data were posted on a profile called EMLEAKS to Pastebin, a site that allows anonymous document sharing. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for posting the data or if any of it was genuine.

France: U.S. far-right activists, WikiLeaks and bots help amplify Macron leaks: researchers | Reuters

U.S. far-right activists helped amplify a leak of hacked emails belonging to leading French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign, some researchers said on Saturday, with automated bots and the Twitter account of WikiLeaks also propelling a leak that came two days before France’s presidential vote. The rapid spread on Twitter (TWTR.N), Facebook (FB.O) and the messaging forum 4chan of emails and other campaign documents that Macron’s campaign said on Friday had been stolen recalled the effort by right-wing activists and Russian state media to promote hacked documents embarrassing to Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton last year. It also renewed questions whether social media companies have done enough to limit fake accounts or spammed content on their platforms and how media organizations should report on hacked information.

France: France starts probing ‘massive’ hack of emails and documents reported by Macron campaign | The Washington Post

The French campaign watchdog on Saturday began investigating the “massive and coordinated piracy action” that presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron reported just minutes before the official end of campaigning in the most heated election for the presidency that France has seen in decades. Late Friday, the Macron campaign said in a statement that it had been the victim of a major hacking operation that saw thousands of emails and other internal communications dumped into the public domain. At the end of a high-stakes race, the news quickly stoked fears of a targeted operation meant to destabilize the electoral process, especially after reports of Russian hacking in the U.S. presidential election.

National: FBI Director: If left unchecked, Russian hackers will change vote tallies in a future U.S. election | Cyberscoop

FBI Director James Comey predicts that if left undeterred, Russian hackers will one day attempt to change the vote tally in a U.S. election. Comey said as much during a public hearing Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Members asked Comey a series of questions concerning Russia’s ability to conduct damaging cyber-operations against both the U.S. and its allies. “In my view, [Russia is] the greatest threat of any nation on earth given their intention and capability,” Comey blankly stated. Last year, in the months preceding the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8, the Homeland Security Department discovered a series of digital attacks aimed specifically at voter registration databases used in different states.

National: Russian election hacking ‘wildly successful’ in creating discord: former U.S. lawmaker | Reuters

Russia succeeded in its goals of sowing discord in U.S. politics by meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which will likely inspire similar future efforts, two top former U.S. voices on intelligence said on Tuesday. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers agreed at a panel at Harvard University that Russia likely believed it had achieved its goals and could attempt to repeat its performance in elections in other countries. “Their purpose was to sew discontent and mistrust in our elections they wanted us to be at each others’ throat when it was over,” Rogers said at the panel at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “It’s influencing, I would say, legislative process today. That’s wildly successful.”

Editorials: The Kremlin turns its electoral meddling to Western Europe | The Washington Post

By now it should be clear that the new normal of Russian conduct on the international stage includes tampering with elections in Western democracies to boost candidates the Kremlin believes likely to do its bidding and to harass those who won’t. Having done exactly that in the 2016 U.S. elections, President Vladimir Putin’s intelligence agencies are now directing their subterfuge at Europe, including the continent’s foremost economic powers: Germany and France. The immediate targets of Russian cyber-meddling are Emmanuel Macron, the front-runner in the second and final round of France’s presidential election, set for May 7, and think tanks associated with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose governing coalition faces elections this fall. Like Hillary Clinton, whose campaign was similarly in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, neither Mr. Macron nor Ms. Merkel has been shy about condemning Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine. They have backed economic sanctions against Russia that have infuriated Mr. Putin.

Illinois: Elections Board Offers More Information on Hacking Incident | WSIU

The State Board of Elections says hackers gained access to the information of 80-thousand Illinois voters — including their social security numbers and driver’s licenses. Elections officials say hackers had access to Illinois’ system for nearly three weeks before they were detected. They did get access to personal information, but officials say that’s about it. Senator Michael Hastings from Tinley Park says the source of the breach matches an address the FBI has linked to Russian state security. He says future elections could be in danger. “If they know how to operate through our system, not only at our state level, but through our municipalities, there’s no telling what they can do.”

France: In France, the Predictable Has Finally Happened | The Atlantic

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron suffered a “massive, co-ordinated hacking” effort Friday night less than 48 hours before the election—an attack that drew immediate parallels to the cyberattacks that hit Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign last year, as well as to alleged electoral interference in other parts of Europe. Macron’s campaign announced Friday that tens of thousands of its internal emails and documents were leaked to the public via a file-sharing website. The parallels to the 2016 U.S. election are striking: Both occurred days before an election. Both were carried out by hacking the personal and professional email accounts of campaign staffers. And both were directed at more establishment-friendly candidates—not their conservative opponents. While the perpetrators of the Macron hack haven’t been identified, numerous intelligence agencies have expressed confidence that Russia was behind the hacking of Clinton’s emails during the 2016 U.S. election. Russia is also said to have targeted the French electoral process, as well as elections in other counties where the leading candidates have been critical of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

National: Private Hearing With Intelligence Chiefs Revives House Inquiry on Russia | The New York Times

The House’s investigation into Russian meddling in the election lurched back to life on Thursday, as a closed-door hearing with James B. Comey, director of the F.B.I., and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, cleared the way for the inquiry to move forward. Representatives K. Michael Conaway of Texas, the newly minted Republican leader of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation, and Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat, said they were inviting more witnesses and requesting documents — effectively restarting the investigation that halted in recent months amid political infighting. Those witnesses will include Sally Q. Yates, the former acting attorney general who was fired by President Trump, they said. Plans for a public hearing with Ms. Yates in March were scrapped at the last minute despite protest from committee Democrats. Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and the committee’s chairman, argued that they first needed more time with Mr. Comey and Admiral Rogers.

National: Comey says he feels mildly nauseous to think news of Clinton emails might have influenced election | Associated Press

FBI Director James Comey told Congress Wednesday that revealing the reopening of the Hillary Clinton email probe just before Election Day came down to a painful, complicated choice between “really bad” and “catastrophic” options. He said he’d felt “mildly nauseous” to think he might have tipped the election outcome but in hindsight would change nothing. “I would make the same decision,” Comey declared during a lengthy hearing in which Democratic senators grilled him on the seeming inconsistency between the Clinton disclosure 11 days before the election and his silence about the bureau’s investigation into possible contacts between Russia and Trump’s campaign. Comey, offering an impassioned public defense of how he handled the election-year issues, insisted that the FBI’s actions in both investigations were consistent. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI cannot take into account how it might benefit or harm politicians. “I can’t consider for a second whose political futures will be affected and in what way,” Comey told the senators. “We have to ask ourselves what is the right thing to do and then do that thing.”

Europe: Russian Election Hacks in France and Germany Are Still Active Despite US Sanctions | WIRED

Ten Days after US intelligence agencies pinned the breach of the Democratic National Committee last October on the Russian government, Vice President Joe Biden promised government would “send a message” to the Kremlin. Two months later, the White House announced new sanctions against a handful of Russian officials and companies, and kicked 35 Russian diplomats out of the country. Six months later, it appears that the message has been thoroughly ignored. The Russian hackers who gleefully spilled the emails of the DNC, Colin Powell, and the Clinton campaign remain as busy as ever, this time targeting the elections of France and Germany. And that failure to stop Russia’s online adventurism, cybersecurity analysts say, points to a rare sort of failure in digital diplomacy: Even after clearly identifying the hackers behind one the most brazen nation-state attacks against US targets in modern history, America still hasn’t figured out how to stop them.

Illinois: Voting records hack didn’t target specific records, says IT staff | The Hill