[Peace-discuss] My neighbor's dog is influencing the U.S. elections

[David Johnson]

Another bullshit evidence free conspiracy theory propaganda story from the
New York Times. Look over there it's the Chinese. No it's now the Iranians.
Those Russians are still hiding under your bed. Next it will be Venezuela.
Nicolas Maduro told me who to vote for so I must obey. Why doesn't Facebook
and Twitter censor / block this unsubstantiated story ( one of many ) like
they did the N.Y. Post story about the Bidens ????

 

Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days, U.S. Officials
Warn

Iran is behind threatening, spoofed emails sent to voters, the officials
said, but there was no indication that any votes themselves had been
altered.

 

 

 

By  <https://www.nytimes.com/by/julian-e-barnes> Julian E. Barnes and
<https://www.nytimes.com/by/david-e-sanger> David E. Sanger

*	Oct. 21, 2020

.          

*	 

.  .  .  WASHINGTON - Iran and Russia have both obtained American voter
registration data, top national security officials announced late on
Wednesday, providing the first concrete evidence that the two countries are
stepping in to try to influence the presidential election as it enters its
final two weeks.

Iran used the information
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/florida-alaska-trump-emails.
html> to send threatening, faked emails to voters, said John Ratcliffe, the
director of national intelligence, and Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I.
director, in an evening announcement from the bureau's headquarters.
Intelligence agencies had collected information that Iran planned to take
more steps to influence the vote in coming days, prompting the unusual
timing of the briefing as an effort to deter further action by Tehran.

There was no indication that any election result tallies were changed or
that information about who is registered to vote was altered, either of
which could affect the outcome of voting that has already begun across the
United States. The officials also did not claim that either nation hacked
into voter registration systems - leaving open the possibility that the data
was available to anyone who knew where to look.

The voter data obtained by Iran and Russia was mostly public, according to
one intelligence official, and Iran was exploiting it as a political
campaign might. Voters' names, party registrations and some contact
information are publicly available. That information may have been merged
with other identifying material, like email addresses, obtained from other
databases, according to intelligence officials, including some sold by
criminal hacking networks on the "dark web."

"This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false
information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow
chaos and undermine your confidence in American democracy," Mr. Ratcliffe
said.

The Trump administration's announcement that a foreign adversary, Iran, had
tried to influence the election by sending intimidating emails was both a
stark warning and a reminder of how other powers can exploit the
vulnerabilities exposed by the Russian interference in 2016. But it may also
play into President Trump's hands. For weeks, he has argued, without
evidence, that the vote on Nov. 3 will be "rigged," that mail-in ballots
will lead to widespread fraud and that the only way he can be defeated is if
his opponents cheat.

*	Unlock more free articles.

 
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Now, on the eve of the final debate, he has evidence of foreign influence
campaigns designed to hurt his re-election chances, even if they did not
affect the voting infrastructure.

Some of the spoofed emails, sent to Democratic voters,
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/florida-alaska-trump-emails.
html> purported to be from pro-Trump far-right groups, including the Proud
Boys. Iranian hackers tried to cover their tracks, intelligence and security
officials said, first routing the emails through a compromised Saudi
insurance company network. Later, they sent more than 1,500 emails using the
website of an Estonian textbook company, according to an analysis by
researchers at Proofpoint, a cybersecurity firm.

Until now, some officials had insisted that Russia remains the primary
threat to the election. But the new information, both Republican and
Democratic officials said, demonstrates that Iran is building upon Russian
techniques and trying to make clear that it, too, is capable of being a
force in the election.

Since August, intelligence officials have warned that Iran opposed Mr.
Trump's re-election, hardly a surprise after he exited the Iran nuclear deal
more than two years ago and reimposed crushing economic sanctions on the
country. The officials said Iran did not intend to deter voters, but rather
to hurt Mr. Trump and mobilize support for Joseph R. Biden Jr., the
Democratic nominee, by angering voters about the president's apparent
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/us/proud-boys-trump.html> embrace of the
Proud Boys in the first debate.

Keep up with Election 2020

Mr. Biden has indicated that he would re-enter the nuclear deal and lift
many of those sanctions as long as Iran first returns to obeying the limits
on its nuclear program that it agreed to five years ago.

Iran sharply denied the accusations, suggesting they were fabricated and
calling them an attempt by the American government to undermine its own
voters' confidence in the election.

"Unlike the U.S., Iran does not interfere in other countries' elections,"
Alireza Miryousefi, the spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the United
Nations, said in an apparent reference to the C.I.A.'s efforts to depose an
Iranian leader in the 1950s.

"Iran has no interest in interfering in the U.S. election and no preference
for the outcome," he added.

But American officials have insisted that Iran has been considering how to
influence the election for months. At one time, officials thought that the
country's military and clerical leaders could try to interrupt oil markets
or mount some sort of attack in the Middle East
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/us/politics/us-iran-election.html>
intended to hurt Mr. Trump. Tehran pulled back from those plans, and
Wednesday's announcement suggested that instead it was following a playbook
closer to Russia's - and one less likely to provoke an American military
response.

The fact that Iran - which has stepped up its cyberabilities drastically
over the past decade, after its nuclear program was attacked with American
and Israeli cyberweapons - was involved demonstrates how fast other nations
have learned from Russia's influence operations in 2016.

"We are under attack, and we are going to be up to Nov. 3 and probably
beyond," said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, who sits on the
Senate Intelligence Committee. "Both the American people have to be
skeptical and thoughtful about information they receive, and certainly
election officials have to be doubly cautious now that we know again they
are targets."

Sign up to receive an email when we publish a new story about the 2020
election.

Mr. Ratcliffe
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/us/politics/john-ratcliffe-intelligence.
html> has drawn criticism for embracing Mr. Trump's political agenda from
what is typically an apolitical post, while Mr. Wray has repeatedly been the
target of the president's ire over his refusal to do so, according to people
briefed on the president's private conversations. Mr. Trump has discussed
firing the F.B.I. director after the election, the people said.

 
<https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/2020-election?name=styln-elections-2020&
region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=storyline_latest_update
s_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a94110-1467-11eb-8656-f
d31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=0> Election 2020 >

 
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=
styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=st
oryline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a9
4111-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=1> Latest Updates

Updated 

Oct. 22, 2020, 8:37 a.m. ET32 minutes ago

32 minutes ago

*
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=
styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=st
oryline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a9
4112-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=2#under-pressure-to-ta
ke-a-stand-on-court-packing-biden-says-hell-take-cues-from-scholars> Under
pressure to take a stand on court packing, Biden says he'll take cues from
scholars.
*
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=
styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=st
oryline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a9
4113-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=2#six-former-commerce-
secretaries-endorse-biden> Six former commerce secretaries endorse Biden.
*
<https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/22/us/trump-biden-debate-tonight?name=
styln-elections-2020&region=inline&label=undefined&module=undefined&block=st
oryline_latest_updates_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=d8a9
4114-1467-11eb-8656-fd31e5977e22&variant=1_Show&index=2#trumps-cash-crunch-i
s-constraining-his-campaign-in-the-homestretch> Trump's cash crunch is
constraining his campaign in the homestretch.

Is this helpful?

Intelligence officials briefed Senate leaders on Wednesday, including
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader; Senator Marco
Rubio, Republican of Florida and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee;
and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the panel's top Democrat. Mr. Rubio and
Mr. Warner urged the intelligence agencies to release more information about
the threat, but officials said they had to limit what information they made
public, according to people briefed on the meeting.

Later,  <https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1319089565848788993?s=20> on
"The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC, Mr. Schumer said the intelligence
officials did not tell him that the Iranian activity was meant to hurt the
Trump campaign. "From the briefing, I had the strong impression it was much
rather to undermine confidence in elections and not aimed at any particular
figure," he said.

Officials have been warning for months about the risk of what are known as
perception hacks: efforts to use a mix of easily accessible data to create
the impression among voters that foreign powers are actually inside voting
infrastructure. That perception alone, officials said, could shake
confidence in the integrity of the vote - exactly what Russia has been
seeking to do since its interference in 2016, when it scanned the contents
of many state election systems and penetrated a few, including Arizona and
Illinois, even if it did not change any votes.

"This may be the beginning of a more concerted operation," Mr. King said.
"They don't have to do anything; they just have to make people think they
are doing something."

Iran has tinkered at the edges of American election interference since 2012,
but always as a minor actor. Last year, it stepped up its game, private
cybersecurity firms have warned. They have caught Iranian operatives
occasionally impersonating politicians and journalists around the world,
often to spread narratives that are aimed at denigrating Israel or Saudi
Arabia, its two major adversaries in the Middle East.

"But they have gone from propaganda to deliberate interference in this
election," John Hultquist, the senior director of FireEye, a Silicon Valley
security firm, said after Wednesday's announcement.

"Their focus here is to prey on existing fears that election infrastructure
will be subverted and hacked, as well as fears of voter intimidation," he
said.

Iran may not have had to hack the data it used for the emails, instead it
simply may have bought the information. In recent days, Trustwave, a
cybersecurity firm,
<https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/massive-us-
voters-and-consumers-databases-circulate-among-hackers/> discovered voter
databases for sale on the dark web and alerted the F.B.I. The databases
would be "highly desirable to U.S. adversaries," said Mark Whitehead, a
global vice president at the firm. Hackers, he said, are merging public
information with material stolen in data breaches and selling the result.

"The consumer and voter databases that we discovered hackers are currently
selling significantly lowers the barrier to entry for nation-states to
execute sophisticated phishing, disinformation and intimidation campaigns,"
Mr. Whitehead said.

Mr. Ratcliffe and Mr. Wray said little about Russia, but until the wave of
fake emails, Moscow had been the No. 1 concern of the National Security
Agency, the United States Cyber Command and the Department of Homeland
Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has
responsibility for helping states secure their voting systems.

Two weeks ago, Cyber Command, a part of the military,
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/politics/election-hacking-trump-micro
soft-cyber-command.html> helped paralyze a complex network developed by
Russian-speaking hackers and used in ransomware attacks on cities and towns
across the United States, along with on many companies. Microsoft led a team
of firms doing the same, armed with court orders that enabled them to take
down the command-and-control servers used to distribute the tools, which are
called TrickBot. The move was made to disrupt the system so that it could
not be used to lock up voter registration systems.

In recent days, another Russian hacking group called Energetic Bear, often
linked to the F.S.B. - one of the successors to the Soviet Union's K.G.B. -
appears to have focused its attentions on gaining access to state and local
government networks. That has caught the attention of federal investigators
because, until now, the group had largely targeted energy firms, including
public utilities.

But there is no evidence that the hackers have directly attacked any
election infrastructure. The fear among cybersecurity experts is that once
inside local government networks, they could try to move laterally, into
voter registration databases.

So far, there is no evidence they have tried to do that, but officials said
that kind of move would come only in the last days of the election campaign,
if at all.

Iran's efforts appear to focus on voter intimidation and disinformation.
Some spoofed emails sent to voters contained links to a false and deceptive
video that tried to scare voters into believing the senders were also
capable of manipulating the mail-in vote process, playing on fears that Mr.
Trump has fanned with his insistence that mail-in ballots are subject to
fraud.

Though the link was not widely shared on social media, a few users did post
it to Twitter. Twitter said in a statement on Wednesday night that it had
moved "quickly to proactively and permanently suspend a small number of
accounts and limit the sharing of media" in the Iran-led campaign, but it
gave no specifics.

Twitter said that the link to the video never gained traction on the
platform or reached a widespread audience, though its investigation is still
open.

 

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