Tag: Russian election interference

US expels Russian diplomats, imposes sanctions for hacking

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration announced Thursday the U.S. is expelling 10 Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions against dozens of companies and people, holding the Kremlin accountable for interference in last year’s presidential election and the hacking of federal agencies.

The sweeping measures are meant to punish Russia for actions that U.S. officials say cut to the core of American democracy and to deter future acts by imposing economic costs on Moscow, including by targeting its ability to borrow money. The sanctions are certain to exacerbate tensions with Russia, which promised a response, even as some experts said the measures appeared tailored to avoid an out-of-control escalation of retaliatory acts between the two countries.

Sanctions against six Russian companies that support the country’s cyber efforts represent the first retaliatory measures against the Kremlin for the hack familiarly known as the SolarWinds breach, with the U.S. explicitly linking the intrusion to the SVR, a Russian intelligence agency. Though such intelligence-gathering missions are not uncommon, officials said they were determined to act because of the operation’s broad scope and the high cost of the intrusion on private companies. Continue reading.

Putin authorized extensive election influence campaign, intelligence report says.

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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized extensive efforts to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. during the election last year, including by mounting covert operations to influence people close to President Donald J. Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released on Tuesday.

The report did not name those people but seemed to refer to the work of Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who relentlessly pushed accusations of corruption about Mr. Biden and his family involving Ukraine.

“Russian state and proxy actors who all serve the Kremlin’s  Continue reading.

Will Russia influence the American vote?

The idea that someone recently tried to influence Americans to vote for a particular candidate by sending them threatening emails may sound outlandish – as might federal officials’ allegation that the Iranian government is behind those messages. 

But U.S. voters should prepare for even more strange and unexpected examples of information warfare that manipulate, distort or destroy election-related information between now and Election Day – and perhaps beyond that, depending on whether there are questions about who may have won the presidency.

Since 2016, Americans have learned that foreign interests attempt to affect the outcomes of presidential elections, including with social media postings and television ads. Continue reading.

Russia Poses Greater Election Threat Than Iran, Many U.S. Officials Say

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Russia’s hackers appeared to be preparing to sow chaos amid any uncertainty around election results, officials said.

WASHINGTON — While senior Trump administration officials said this week that Iran has been actively interfering in the presidential election, many intelligence officials said they remained far more concerned about Russia, which in recent days has hacked into state and local computer networks in breaches that could allow Moscow broader access to American voting infrastructure.

The discovery of the hacks came as American intelligence agencies, infiltrating Russian networks themselves, have pieced together details of what they believe are Russia’s plans to interfere in the presidential race in its final days or immediately after the election on Nov. 3. Officials did not make clear what Russia planned to do, but they said its operations would be intended to help President Trump, potentially by exacerbating disputes around the results, especially if the race is too close to call.

F.B.I. and Homeland Security officials also announced on Thursday that Russia’s state hackers had targeted dozens of state and local governments and aviation networks starting in September. They stole data from the computer servers of at least two unidentified targets and continued to crawl through some of the affected networks, the agencies said. Other officials said that the targets included some voting-related systems, and that they may have been collateral damage in the attacks. Continue reading.

Five takeaways on Iran, Russia election interference

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News that Iran and Russia accessed voter registration data has dropped like a lightning bolt into an already heated campaign battle with less than two weeks before Election Day.

The announcement from administration officials that the countries had accessed voter registration data and were believed to be behind threatening emails sent to U.S. voters sparked immediate concerns and questions.

Here are five takeaways. Continue reading.

Microsoft seeks to disrupt Russian criminal botnet it fears could seek to sow confusion in the presidential election

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The software giant won a court order to seize servers used by the Trickbot botnet, a network of infected computers that Microsoft says might have been used to lock up voter-registration systems.

SEATTLE — Microsoft has taken legal steps to dismantle one of the world’s largest botnets, an effort it says is aimed at thwarting criminal hackers who might seek to snarl state and local computer systems used to maintain voter rolls or report on election results.

The company obtained an order from a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia last week that gave Microsoft control of the Trickbot botnet, a global network it describes as the largest in the world. The company wants to disrupt hackers’ ability to operate with the election barely three weeks away.

Run by Russian-speaking criminals, the botnet poses a “theoretical but real” threat to election integrity by launching ransomware attacks, in which data is rendered inaccessible unless the victim pays a ransom, said Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president of customer security and trust. Continue reading.

Comey defends probe of Trump and Russia as Republicans insist it was biased

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Former FBI director James B. Comey on Wednesday defended the bureau’s 2016 investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, pushing back on Senate Republicans’ skeptical questions about the probe and taking particular aim at Attorney General William P. Barr’s assertion that it was unfounded.

Testifying before the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee as part of that panel’s latest review of the Russia probe, Comey repeatedly told GOP lawmakers he disagreed with the “preamble” to their questions and expressed unfamiliarity with recently released information that they claim discredits the investigation.

He grew particularly exasperated when asked about Barr’s criticism that the FBI’s decision to open the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign was based on insufficient evidence, saying he had “no idea what on earth” the attorney general was talking about. Continue reading.

Mail-in voting, police protests create fertile ground for disinformation in Minnesota

Hours after Philando Castile was shot and killed by a St. Anthony police officer in 2016, during another heated presidential election, a mysterious Facebook page began to run ads promoting a protest called “Justice for Philando Castile.”

Black Lives Matter activists in Minneapolis knew nothing about it. Soon they learned that the website associated with the Facebook page “Don’t Shoot” was registered to a seemingly false name and address.

A year later, U.S. intelligence analysts released a report saying the Russian government had sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential election using social media. Subsequent law enforcement and media investigations uncovered a sham organization called “Blacktivist” — a troll operation run from St. Petersburg, Russia, led by a Kremlin-linked group known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA). Continue reading.

We now know the reason for Mueller’s biggest mistake

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After Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation into ties between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, the big question still loomed: Was the president guilty of a serious crime?

Attorney General Bill Barr quickly took it upon himself to answer the question, explaining that the special counsel’s work had failed to accuse Donald Trump of criminal acts, and he personally concluded that insufficient evidence existed for any charge. This announcement stunned and perplexed many observers while cheering the president’s allies. The truth only became clear weeks later when the Mueller report was finally released: It laid out substantial evidence that Trump was guilty of many instances of obstruction of justice, but the report was written so as to avoid making this conclusion explicit. (Mueller also sent a letter to Barr arguing that his initial statements about the resolution of the case had been misleading.)

Now, new revelations from one of Mueller’s top deputies, Andrew Weissmann, reveal the context of Mueller’s peculiar choice — one that I’ve argued was a colossal mistake. Continue reading.

Mueller prosecutor says special counsel ‘could have done more’ to hold Trump accountable

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A former prosecutor on special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team writes in a new book that the group failed to fully investigate President Trump’s financial ties and should have stated explicitly that they believed he obstructed justice, claiming that their efforts were limited by the ever-present threat of Trump disbanding their office and by their own reluctance to be aggressive.

In an explosive tell-all that offers the most detailed account yet of what happened behind the scenes during Mueller’s two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, Andrew Weissmann writes of his frustration that the special counsel failed to subpoena the president and otherwise pulled punches for fear of incurring Trump’s wrath.

He lays particular blame on Mueller’s top deputy, Aaron Zebley, for stopping investigators from taking a broad look at Trump’s finances and writes that he now wonders whether investigators had “given it our all,” knowing they left many important questions unanswered. Continue reading.