New Election Security Tool | NIH Calls for Wuhan Lab Investigation | Ransomware Disrupts Meat Plants, and more

Oath Keepers Wanted Antifa to Attack Capitol so Trump Could Declare Martial Law, Indictment Says  (Gino Spocchia, Yahoo News)
The head of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia organisation that took part in January’s insurrection on the US Capitol, allegedly wanted antifa to counter protest on the day to give Donald Trump an excuse to declare martial law.
In charges filed on Sunday against four Oath Keepers related to the Capitol riot, Stewart Rhodes allegedly told members of the militia that if antifa “go kinetic on us, then we’ll go kinetic on them.”
Prosecutors believe that some members thought Mr Trump could invoke a 200-year-old act to stop domestic terrorism, and override the results of the 2020 election, in the run up to 6 January.

Rep. Nancy Mace Says Her Home Was Vandalized by “Antifa Symbols”  (Jordan Williams, The Hill)
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said Tuesday that her home was vandalized by “antifa symbols” on Memorial Day.
Mace’s office said in a statement that the front steps of her South Carolina home were vandalized with black spray paint “in the early morning hours” on Monday.
The first-term congresswoman shared photos of the vandalism on Twitter. One photo shows a sidewalk with encircled A’s drawn around the phrase “All politicians are bastards.”

Walmart Mass Shooting by Man with ‘Extremist Ideologies’ Is Thwarted, Texas Cops Say  (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)
A week long investigation led to the arrest Friday of a man who had plans for a mass shooting at a Walmart, Texas officials say. Coleman Blevins, a 28-year-old man from Kerrville, was charged with making a terroristic threat. The Kerr County Sheriff’s Office says federal charges are possible against Blevins, who is believed to hold “extremist ideologies.” The sheriff’s office teamed up with the Texas Department of Public Safety and FBI in its investigation. Authorities intercepted a message in which Blevins indicated he was preparing for a mass shooting, according to the sheriff’s office. He made a specific threat toward Walmart in the message, but it’s unclear which Walmart location he was referring to, the sheriff said. Authorities quickly moved to arrest Blevins when they found out he was capable of committing the attack. Investigators found guns and ammunition at Blevins’ home, as well as radical ideology paraphernalia that included books, flags and handwritten documents, the sheriff said. One of the books shown in a picture released by the sheriff’s office was “The Turner Diaries,” which was published in 1978 by the leader of the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Blevins was believed to be acting alone and Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha said he “wanted to die for the cause by taking out some people at a Walmart,” KENS reported.

At Least 16 Members of UK Armed Forces Investigated over Extremism Concerns  (Tom Batchelor, Independent)
More than a dozen members of the armed forces have been referred to the UK’s counter-terrorism programme, according to new figures. Ministry of Defence (MoD) data shows that in 2019, a total of 14 investigations into serving military personnel were conducted, with 11 of those sparked by far-right concerns. There were fewer than 10 investigations the following year and “less than five” so far in 2021, according to information revealed under a Freedom of Information request. The MoD failed to give a precise breakdown, meaning the number could be even higher. Referrals to Prevent are made when there are concerns that an individual is at risk of becoming involved in terrorist activity. Nick Lowles, Hope Not Hate’s chief executive, told The Guardian, which obtained the data, that “referrals of so many serving military personnel to Prevent, and the general rise in violent far-right extremism in society as a whole, should act as a reminder of the ever-present threat of [far-right] extremism and the need for the MoD to increase its internal education and enforcement of its publicly stated rules.

Ransomware Disrupts Meat Plants in Latest Attack on Critical U.S. Business  (Julie Creswell, Nicole Perlroth and Noam Scheiber, New York Times)
A cyberattack on the world’s largest meat processor forced the shutdown of nine beef plants in the United States on Tuesday, according to union officials, and disrupted production at poultry and pork plants. The attack could upset the nation’s meat markets and raises new questions about the vulnerability of critical American businesses. The company, JBS, said the majority of its plants would reopen on Wednesday. But even one day’s disruption at JBS could “significantly impact” wholesale beef prices, according to analysts at Daily Livestock Report. The breach at JBS was a ransomware attack, the White House said — the second recent such attack to freeze up a critical U.S. business operation. Last month, a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, which transports gas to nearly half the East Coast, triggered gas and jet-fuel shortages and panic buying. JBS, which is based in Brazil and accounts for one-fifth of the daily U.S. cattle harvest, said in a statement late Tuesday that it had made “significant progress resolving the cyberattack.” “Our systems are coming back online, and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat,” Andre Nogueira, the chief executive of JBS USA, said in the statement.

First Major Voting Vendor, Hart InterCivic, Partners with Microsoft on Ambitious Software Security Tool ElectionGuard  (Tim Starks, Cyberscoop)
The ElectionGuard technology that Microsoft touts as a way to make elections more secure and verifiable is taking its biggest step yet: Hart InterCivic, one of the big three election vendors, says it will incorporate ElectionGuard into one of its voting systems.
The ElectionGuard open-source software development kit gives voters a unique code to track their encrypted vote and confirm it wasn’t manipulated, and it offers a way for third parties to validate election results, according to Microsoft. The two companies jointly announced the partnership on Thursday.
Hart InterCivic is the biggest partner to date for ElectionGuard, as one of three vendors — alongside Election Systems & Software and Dominion Voting Systems — that dominate the marketplace for voting machine technology.