The Russia connectionQuiet so far, but not all clear

Published 5 November 2018

Homeland Security and intelligence community officials continue to say that the we are not seeing the same level of online foreign election interference in the run-up to the midterms as we experienced in 2016, cybersecurity experts warn the United States is not necessarily in the clear.

Homeland Security and intelligence community officials continue to say that the we are not seeing the same level of online foreign election interference in the run-up to the midterms as we experienced in 2016, cybersecurity experts warn the United States is not necessarily in the clear. 

The New York Times:

… From the cyberwar room that the Department of Homeland Security runs round the clock in a bland office building in Arlington, Va., to Microsoft’s threat-assessment center at the other end of the country, in Redmond, Wash., every form of digital radar is being focused on Russia, especially its military-intelligence unit, formerly known as the GRU.

The National Security Agency, which failed to respond when Russian hackers were first seen inside the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems in the summer of 2015, has now taken to sending messages directly to Russian hackers, reminding them that they are being watched.

And still, the nervousness in all those places is palpable ahead of Tuesday’s election. While some say they believe President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is sitting out this election — the scrutiny is intense, the argument goes, and 470 House and Senate races make it just too hard for the Russians to figure out their interests, much less manipulate the outcome.

Still, others find the quiet deeply disturbing, perhaps a sign of a plan to make a last-minute effort to convince voters that their ballots might not be counted, or counted correctly.

(…)

While there are few signs of pre-election intrusions into voter-registration systems, the social media campaigns never ended; some accelerated immediately after the 2018 elections …