Our picksDouble-Edged Election Security Tech | Vehicular-Based Terror Attacks | How Trump Grid Orders Ran Aground, and more

The Chinese MSS Is Attacking Us with Our Own Tools(Garretson Blight and Ckayton Barlow-Wilcox, Nextgov)
Here’s how to get ahead of the adversary with integrated cyber defenses.

Secret Tapes Show Neo-Nazi Group “The Base” Recruiting former Members of the Military(Samantha Springer, NBC News)
Twenty percent of the prospective recruits recorded said they were active-duty military or had formerly served in the military in some capacity.

Neo-Nazi Leaders of Greece’s Golden Dawn Sentenced to 13 Years (Helena Smith, Guardian)
Leaders of violent far-right group, including former MPs, shown little leniency by judges.

Rise of Vehicular-Based Terror Attacks on Peaceful Protesters Marks New Trend in America’s Civil Unrest (Milwaukee Indepndent)
Vehicular attacks have become commonplace all over America. Wherever there are protests over racial injustice, there often are acts of violence against them. Indeed, according to Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats, there were 104 separate incidents of drivers crashing into protests between May 27 – the date of the George Floyd killing – and September 5, including 96 civilians and 8 police vehicles. The motivations behind some of the incidents are unknown or contested.

UN Humanitarian Chief: Sahel Is Very Close to Tipping Point(Edith M. Lederer, AP / Washington Post)
The U.N. humanitarian chief warned Tuesday that daunting problems in Africa’s Sahel region are getting worse and the region “is very close to a tipping point — and so by extension are its African neighbors, Europe, and the world.”
Mark Lowcock said in a virtual speech to students at the Paris Institute for Political Science that he deals with the world’s worst humanitarian tragedies, and “nowhere scares me more than the Sahel.”

Technology a Double-Edged Sword for U.S. Election Security(Bridget Botelho, Techtarget)
Technologies are being weaponized to undermine the 2020 U.S. presidential election, but IT systems will also help identify fraud and verify results in a contested election.

Creating and Weaponizing Deep Fakes(Avast Blog)
Professor Hany Farid of UC Berkeley spoke at Avast’s CyberSec&AI Connected virtual conference last week. The event showcased leading academics and tech professionals from around the world to examine critical issues around AI for privacy and cybersecurity.
Farid has spent a lot of his time researching the use and evolution of deep fake videos. It was an intriguing session and demonstrated the lengths that the fake creators will go to make them more realistic and what security researchers will need to do to detect them.

Homeland Security Funds 5 New Projects Exploring Blockchain Technology(Brandi Vincent, Nextgov)
The move builds on several others the agency recently made in pursuit of modernization.

Department of Homeland Security Employees Have Been Told to Report Colleagues Suspected of Leaking Information (Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed News)
“This is another way to say to people: People are watching you. It is not just us, but your fellow colleagues now have an eye on you.”

How Trump Grid Orders Ran Aground (Peter Behr, E&E News)
In the past two years, President Trump has issued two executive orders meant to break through obstacles to developing defenses against unlikely but potentially devastating attacks on the nation’s electric power networks.
With time running out in Trump’s first term, neither order has opened a clear path toward meeting the shadowy threats the policies targeted. The executive orders haven’t met with executive action, according to critics of Trump’s handling of the grid security risks.