The Russia watchRussia’s Europe meddling; 2018 election security plan; Russia hacks Winter Olympics, and more

Intelligence Committee prepares election security plan to thwart Russian hacking (Erin Kelly, USA Today)
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said the panel will soon issue recommendations to help states thwart Russian efforts to hack election systems in advance of congressional primaries that begin in March…. “I do think there’s a real sense of urgency,” Warner said in an interview with USA TODAY. “The one thing we do know with certainty is that Russian interference in our elections did not end on Election Day 2016.”

Everything we know so far about Russian election meddling in Europe (Rick Noack, Washington Post)
Even though American intelligence agencies agree that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. elections and have stood by their assessment, Trump has sent out mixed messages. After appearing to back the agencies, President Donald Trump later backtracked in November and publicly recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him he “didn’t meddle.” “I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it,” Trump said at the time, referring to Putin’s remarks. European leaders have long greeted the Russian leader’s assurances with more skepticism, given what they perceive as deliberate deceptions by the Russian leader.

Congress’ grilling of tech companies in 2017 foreshadows the debates of 2018 (Evelyn Douek, Lawfare)
While the United States prepares for the 2018 midterm elections, there are reports that just this week the Russian troll farm responsible for most of the meddling in 2016 has tripled its office space. It is therefore helpful to revisit the most extensive public accounting of the problems and potential solutions to anticipate how the issues and debates around them will play out this year.

Why is WikiLeaks trying to kneecap Michael Wolff’s book? (Jack Holes, Esquire)
How is leaking the entire text in line with their mission?

The digger who commissioned the Trump-Russia dossier (John Cassidy, New Yorker)
The newly released testimony of the Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson provides details about the genesis of the infamous document.

Czechs fear Russian fake news in presidential election (James Shotter, Financial Times)

From the US to Germany, security officials have warned about the growing threat to elections from Russian disinformation campaigns — and in the Czech Republic there are fears that this week’s presidential election could become the next target.

We are being defeated in a digital war – but there is still time to fight back (Haroon Ullah, Globe and Mail)
Last year, Russia and its allies engineered a rift between truth and lies, fact and fake news, humans and bots – and the bots are winning. They’re winning because social-media firms profit from all traffic – whatever the source – and governments are simply too slow to counter this threat. Add to this the evidence of Russian-backed attacks on key institutions of Western democracy: the European Union and Brexit, the Democratic National Committee and the Podesta e-mails.

Sneaky malware disguises itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer (Danny Palmer, ZDNet)
Researchers uncover an innocent software update that’s really a cover for espionage.

Fancy Bear: Alleged Russian hackers leak ‘emails and documents’ from Olympic body (Jason Murdock, IBTimes)
ybersecurity experts say Fancy Bear - or APT28 - is linked to Russian intelligence.

Republicans work to frustrate Mueller’s Russia investigation as probes close in on Trump White House (Kim Sengupta, Independent)
Mueller may be making progress – but the campaign to protect Trump is stepping up as well