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Men Accused in Whitmer Plot Talked about “Taking Out” Virginia’s Governor, FBI Says (Robert Snell and George Hunter, Detroit News)
Members of an alleged conspiracy to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also talked about “taking out” a second politician, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, an FBI agent testified Tuesday.
FBI Special Agent Richard Trask identified the Virginia governor, a Democrat, during a hearing in federal court in Grand Rapids during which a magistrate judge is expected to decide whether to release three members of the alleged conspiracy on bond pending trial.
“They discussed possible targets, taking out a sitting governor, specifically issues with the governors of Michigan and Virginia,” due to lockdown orders instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trask testified.

Michigan Law Enforcement on Alert in Response to “Plan to Target and Kill Police” (Phoebe Wall Howard, Detroit Free Press)
Michigan law enforcement is on high alert after the FBI revealed an alleged plot by extremist groups to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also involved a “plan to target and kill police.”
“We’re cautious. We’re absolutely more careful,” said First Lt. Mike Shaw of the Michigan State Police. “This is one of the tactics these anti-government, domestic terrorism groups use. Law enforcement is the face of the government. If you’re mad at the government, you’re mad at the police.”

FBI/DHS: Government Election Systems Face Threat from Active Zerologon Exploits(Dan Goodin, Arstechnica)
Zerologon gives attackers instant access to all-powerful domain controllers.

UK’s “Weak” Counter-Extremism Strategy Set for Overhaul (Paul Peachey, The National)
Shake-up reflects shift towards tackling hateful extremism that can lead to violence

Scottish MI5 Spy to Be Crown’s Key Witness in New IRA Terrorism Trial (Henry McDonald, Guardian)
Former police officer infiltrated New IRA’s high command over last eight years, it has emerged

Trickbot Forced Offline in Major Cyber Security Victory (Alex Scroxton, Computerweekly)
Coalition led by Microsoft obtained a court order enabling them to take down the infamous Trickbot botnet’s back-end server infrastructure

Ransomware Operators Now Outsource Network Access Exploits to Speed Up Attacks (Charlie Osborne, ZDNet)
The trend is on the rise as ransomware continues to be lucrative — especially in the enterprise space.

Political Divides, Conspiracy Theories and Divergent News Sources Heading Into 2020 Election (Amy Mitchell, Mark Jurkowitz, J. Baxter Oliphant, and Elizabeth Shearer, Pew Research Center)
43% of Republicans identify fraud as a major problem with voting by mail versus 11% of Democrats.

How Russia, China, and Other Governments Use Coronavirus Disinformation to Reshape Geopolitics (Isra Thange, Nicola Bariletto, Luca Zanotti, Jacob Rob, Samikshya Siwakoti, Jacob N. Shapiro, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Late in May, an article published by the online journal the Strategic Culture Foundation claimed that a German government official leaked information revealing COVID-19 to be “a global false alarm.” Germany’s measures to control the pandemic were doing more harm than the virus itself, the article claimed. The piece went viral and was retweeted a whopping 15,020 times. But the Strategic Culture Foundation was no independent and trustworthy source of information—not about the coronavirus, or about anything else. Purporting to focus on policy analysis and global affairs, the journal was really a front operation for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, which ran it, and the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
That COVID-19 is being incorporated into government propaganda efforts like the Strategic Culture Foundation—which published, according to the US State Department, “Western fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists” for its target audience of Westerners—comes as no surprise. The precursor to the Foreign Intelligence Service, the KGB, ran a global misinformation campaign in the 1980s that accused the United States of developing HIV for use as a “racial weapon,” weakening American diplomacy during the Cold War. Once again, a health crisis is being used as fodder for misinformation that countries like Russia hope will help reshape the geopolitical playing field.
As part of a Princeton University project on COVID-19 misinformation narratives, we’ve been cataloging the various false storylines that have been circulating online since the beginning of the pandemic. Our data is full of stories that we think of as short-term narratives, or those that are relevant to an upcoming event in the next two to three months. As covered in a previous piece, these fake storylines often boost or denigrate one politician or political faction. Another set of political misinformation has a separate aim: to set conditions for arguments to be made in the long-term, over the next few years.

Poisoning Survivors Say Method Gives Russia Plausible Deniability to Silence Anti-Putin Critics (NaNa Sajaia and Gillian Turner, Fox News)
Russian dissidents say the Kremlin is behind poisonings against critics