Iranian and Russian Entities Sanctioned for Election Interference Using AI and Cyber Tactics

The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC on Tuesday leveled sanctions against two entities in Iran and Russia for their attempts to interfere with the November 2024 presidential election. The federal agency said the entities – a subordinate organization of Iran's Islam...

Why your vote can’t be “hacked,” with Cait Conley of CISA (Lock and Code S05E23)

This week on the Lock and Code podcast … The US presidential election is upon the American public, and with it come fears of "election interference." But "election interference" is a broad term. It can mean the now-regular and expected foreign disinformation campaigns that are launched to sow...

U.S. Charges Three Iranian Nationals for Election Interference and Cybercrimes

U.S. federal prosecutors on Friday unsealed criminal charges against three Iranian nationals who are allegedly employed with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps IRGC for their targeting of current and former officials to steal sensitive data. The Department of Justice DoJ accused Masoud Jalili,...

Deepfake Election Interference in Slovakia

Well designed and well timed deepfake or two Slovakian politicians discussing how to rig the election: Šimečka and Denník N immediately denounced the audio as fake. The fact-checking department of news agency AFP said the audio showed signs of being manipulated using AI. But the recording was...

How Cyberattacks Are Transforming Warfare

There is a new battlefield. It is global and challenging to defend. What began with a high-profile incident back in 2007, when Estonia was hit by hackers targeting its government and commercial sector, has evolved into cyber warfare that is being waged constantly worldwide. Today, cyberattacks ha...

US dangles $10 million reward for information about Cl0p ransomware gang

The US Department of States national security rewards program, Rewards for Justice RFJ, is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information linking the Cl0p ransomware gang, or any other malicious cyber actors targeting US critical infrastructure, to a foreign government. Advisory from...

U.S. Charged 2 Iranian Hackers for Threatening Voters During 2020 Presidential Election

The U.S. government on Thursday unsealed an indictment that accused two Iranian nationals of their involvement in cyber-enabled disinformation and threat campaign orchestrated to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections by gaining access to confidential voter information from at least one sta...

How Iran Tried to Undermine the 2020 US Presidential Election

From faked emails to a hacked voter registration database, a new indictment offers fresh details on the attempted interference...

Bad Bot Traffic Breaks Records in 2020

Bad bots have long been a major illness plaguing the internet. As internet traffic reached new heights throughout the global pandemic, unfortunately so did bot traffic. In 2020, 40.8 percent of internet traffic wasn’t human, and 25.6 percent originated from bad bots. What have these bad bots been...

Deepfakes were going to change everything. And then they didn’t

For much of 2020, the most visible conversation about the US election and tech was related to deepfakes images or videos where the subject is replaced by another likeness. They could “destroy democracy” generally, and influence the US election in ways we couldn’t possibly imagine. People talked...

US Sanctions Russia and Expels 10 Diplomats Over SolarWinds Cyberattack

The U.S. and U.K. on Thursday formally attributed the supply chain attack of IT infrastructure management company SolarWinds with "high confidence" to government operatives working for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service SVR. "Russia's pattern of malign behaviour around the world – whether in...

QBot Trojan delivered via malspam campaign exploiting US election uncertainties

This blog post was authored by Jérôme Segura and Hossein Jazi. The 2020 US elections have been the subject of intense scrutiny and emotions, while happening in the middle of a global pandemic. As election night ended and uncertainty regarding the results began to creep in, threat actors decided t...

Iranian Advanced Persistent Threat Actor Identified Obtaining Voter Registration Data

Summary This advisory uses the MITRE Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge ATT &CK® version 8 framework. See the ATT&CK for Enterprise version 8 for all referenced threat actor techniques. This joint cybersecurity advisory was coauthored by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure...

Feds: Iran Behind 'Proud Boys' Email Attacks on Democratic Voters

Federal officials claim that Iranian threat actors are behind two separate email campaigns that assailed Democratic voters this week with threats to “vote for Trump or else.” The campaigns claimed to be from violent extremist group Proud Boys. Two specific email campaigns — one on Tuesday Oct. 20...

CISA and FBI Release Joint Advisories Regarding Russian and Iranian APT Actors

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI have released two joint cybersecurity advisories on widespread advanced persistent threat APT activity. Joint Cybersecurity Advisory: AA20-296A Russian State-Sponsored Advanced Persistent Threat...

Donald Trump Now Has the Senate GOP's Blessing to Undermine Democracy

After making it through a criminal investigation and political impeachment unscathed, Trump now has free rein to invite election interference and more...

Deepfakes laws and proposals flood US

In a rare example of legislative haste, roughly one dozen state and federal bills were introduced in the past 12 months to regulate deepfakes, the relatively modern technology that some fear could upend democracy. Though the federal proposals have yet to move forward, the state bills have found...

Iran-linked Hackers Target Trump 2020 Campaign, Microsoft says

A group of hackers tied to Iran has been attempting to break into accounts associated with the 2020 reelection campaign of President Trump, researchers have discovered. Researchers from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center said they first observed activity from a group called Phosphorus in...

Microsoft: Russia's Fancy Bear Working to Influence EU Elections

As the May elections for European Parliament loom, Russia-linked APT groups are amping up their efforts to target journalists, think-tanks, non-governmental organizations and other members of civil society, according to Microsoft. The tech giant said on Tuesday that it has observed a recent serie...

Nation-State Phishing: A Country-Sized Catch

Thanks to the traditional role of phishing in widespread email scams, there is a general tendency to equate it with clearly fraudulent and obnoxiously implausible emails. While this misperception has not evolved, phishing campaigns have. Andrea Little Limbago Once a threat that went hand-in-hand...