Update: Foreign influence on the 2020 Presidential Election.
Last month I wrote about the influence Russian hacking organizations, namely Fancy Bear, had on the 2016 Presidential election. As of Wednesday, the FBI determined that Iran is now actively targeting Democratic voters registered to vote in the current election cycle. It is also still believed Russia obtained voter information and has further plans to meddle in the current election cycle.
News of the attacks came from Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, on Wednesday, as reported by the Washington Post. On Tuesday, many registered Democrats reported receiving the emails which are believed to have been sent by malicious actors in Iran.
The emails were sent by a group claiming to be the Proud Boys, the group Trump sent a message to during the first presidential debate. The day following the report made by U.S. officials, Iranian officials condemned them as “baseless” and “absurd”.
Ratcliffe warned the “spoofed emails” were meant to, “intimidate voters, incite social unrest, and damage President Trump.” Many of these attacks targeted voters in Alaska and Florida. The voter data allegedly obtained by Iran was in part public and some was commercially available. Though it is still unclear exactly by which means the the information was obtained, it is possible they were obtained the same way as in 2016, through phishing emails and SQL injections.
According to the Washington Post, the messages also warned voters that the Proud Boys were “in possession of all [their] information” and demanded voters to register as Republican and vote for Trump or else they would come after the voters if they did not vote as instructed. Some officials doubt these threatening emails were meant to hurt Trump specifically, and were more aimed at instilling doubt in the American people that the failings of government agencies to protect voter information as they did back during the 2016 election cycle.
Authorities warned that the American people could still receive such an email in the weeks leading up to the election, and insisted that these messages should not be shared or taken seriously. FBI Director Christopher Wray said, ‘[the FBI encourages] everyone to seek election and voting information from reliable sources — namely, your state election officials. And to be thoughtful, careful, and discerning consumers of information online.” The FBI claims increased security and measures to prepare for the 2020 election since the lessons learned from the 2016 election.
These attacks highlight the need for greater cybersecurity in our local and federal systems to protect voter information, as well as the need for greater education for the American people to identify and ignore phony or phishing emails. As this is the second presidential election where foreign actors have directly targeted American voters technologically and psychologically, it is vital that the American people be aware that this could be a regular occurrence every 4 years — a sobering harsh reality.
