• Russian Twitter Trolls Stoke Anti-immigrant Lies Ahead of Canadian Election

    Russian troll activity on Twitter aimed at influencing public opinion has attracted a lot of attention in the United States and other western democracies. Canadians may feel it’s not an issue here. But a recent examination of Twitter data suggests there are reasons to be concerned as the country heads into a federal election.

  • Russia Targeted Election Infrastructure in All 50 States in 2016: Senate Intel Report

    On Thursday the Senate Intelligence Committee releases the first volume in the Committee’s bipartisan investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. elections, dealing with Russia’s attacks on the U.S. election infrastructure. The Committee found that Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states in 2016. In the majority of cases, Russia’s attacks went undetected by the states and federal officials at the time. The report suggested that the Russian efforts in 2016 might have been cataloging options “for use at a later date” — a possibility that officials of the National Security Agency, DHS, and the FBI said was their biggest worry.

  • Russian Government-linked Hacker Group Releases Powerful Adroid Malware

    The St. Petersburg-based Special Technology Center (STC), a Russian technology group linked to the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence branch, was sanctioned by the U.S. government for its role in the 2016 Kremlin-directed cyberattacks on the U.S. election infrastructure. STC is back in the news. This time, for developing n especially powerful and persistent malware, dubbed Monokle.

  • U.S. Intelligence Director Dan Coats Creates Senior Election Security Position

    Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats announced he established the position of Intelligence Community (IC) Election Threats Executive (ETE). The ETE will serve as the DNI’s principal adviser on threats to elections and matters related to election security. Additionally, the ETE will coordinate and integrate all election security activities, initiatives, and programs across the IC and synchronize intelligence efforts in support of the broader U.S. government.

  • U.S. Efforts to Counter Russian Disinformation and Malign Influence

    “President Vladimir Putin’s Russia seeks to weaken Western governments and transatlantic institutions, discredit democratic and liberal values, and create a post-truth world,” says Alina Polyakova. “Russian disinformation campaigns aim to amplify existing social divisions and further polarize democratic societies. As such, they don’t stop when the ballot box closes. Elections may provide an ideal high-impact opportunity for a disinformation actor, but the barrage of disinformation against Western democracies, including the United States, continues between election cycles. Disinformation, as a tool of Russia’s political warfare, is not new. But what is new is that, today, what used to take years, takes minutes. The advance of digital technology and communication allows for the high-speed spread of disinformation, rapid amplification of misleading content, and massive manipulation via unsecured points of influence. This digital ecosystem creates opportunities for manipulation that have exceeded the ability of democratic nations to respond, and sometimes even to grasp the extent of the challenge.”

  • How the U.S. Can Fight Russian Disinformation for Real

    “Where we ought to be setting the rules of engagement, the tone, and the moral compass in responding to Russia’s information war, the United States has been a tardy, timid, or tertiary player, with much of our public servants’ good work on this issue stymied by domestic politicization. Disinformation is not a political issue; it is a democratic one. Beyond that challenge, the United States has not invested sufficient resources to be competitive in the fight against disinformation. Russian information warfare continues to target the United States and our allies, as well as the rules-based international order. However, countering it has not been a budgetary priority” — Nina Jankowicz.

  • Cyber Threats Go Beyond Hackers and Scams but to Democracy Itself

    Much of the discussion surrounding threats of the information age are focused on digitally enabled foreign influence and interference. However, analysis of adversaries’ information campaigns as seen in the 2016 presidential elections and Brexit referendum doesn’t capture the full extent of the problem that is the manipulation society already created. Tech giants haven’t just inadvertently created a new path for information warfare. Rather they have created the architecture for the persistent manipulation of whole societies – an architecture freely used by both adversaries and the tech corporations themselves. Just as market capitalism led to a market society, surveillance capitalism has led to the manipulation society.

  • FBI Director: China No. 1 Counter-Intelligence Threat to the U.S.

    The FBI has more than 1,000 investigations of U.S. intellectual property theft in all 50 states with nearly all leading back to China, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, calling China the No. 1 counter-intelligence threat to the United States. Wray described the threat as “more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counter-intelligence threat that I can think of.”

  • 40 U.S. Diplomats in Cuba Have Suffered Brain Damage: Medical Report

    Brain imaging of 40 U.S. government personnel who served at the U.S. embassy in Havana in 2016, and who experienced a host of neurological symptoms after possible exposure of an unknown source, revealed significant differences in brain tissue and connectivity when compared to healthy individuals, according to a new report. Images reveal key brain differences, particularly in the cerebellum, between impacted patients and healthy individuals, which may underlie clinical findings previously reported by brain experts.

  • Bolstering Democracy in the Digital Age

    The Knight Foundation announced a commitment of nearly $50 million in research to better understand how technology is transforming our democracy and the way we receive and engage with information. “Amidst a growing debate over technology’s role in our democracy, these investments will help ensure society is equipped to make evidence-based decisions on how to govern and manage the now-digital public square, Knight said.

  • Huawei Secretly Built North Korea’s Wireless Network

    On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Huawei had been secretly working in North Korea on various communication projects, including building and maintaining the country’s wireless network. Huawei’s work has been in direct violation of the sanctions imposed on North Korea because of its nuclear weapons activity. The revelations are going to increase worries in the West about the trustworthiness of the Chinese communication giant, and would provide more evidence to support the conclusions of Western intelligence services that Huawei serves the interests of the Chinese government and China’s intelligence services.

  • “A High Risk to Their Users”: An Analysis of Huawei Devices’ Security Vulnerabilities

    Western intelligence services have long suspected that the Chinese communication giant Huawei was a tool of China’s powerful intelligence services. An analysis of the state of security of Huawei’s gear and equipment has found serious security flaws and vulnerabilities. This is important, because even if we take Huawei’s implausible denials of any relationship to Chinese government at face value, the low quality of security of Huawei’s equipment would allow the Chinese government, and other state actors, to compromise the vulnerabilities of networks built with Huawei’s components. Our “analysis shows that Huawei devices quantitatively pose a high risk to their users,” the report says.

  • Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist

    If the stories broadcast by the Trump-endorsed One America News Network sometimes look like outtakes from a Kremlin trolling operation, there may be a reason. One of the on-air reporters at the 24-hour network is a Russian national on the payroll of the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet, Sputnik.

  • FaceApp Makes Today’s Privacy Laws Look Antiquated

    Cameras are everywhere, and data brokers are vacuuming up information on individuals. But regulations have not kept pace. You should stop using FaceApp, because there are few controls on how your data, including your face data, will be used. But the problems that FaceApp poses aren’t unique. Walking around anywhere can get your face included in facial-recognition databases. How that information can be mined, manipulated, bought, or sold is minimally regulated—in the United States and elsewhere.

  • Managing and Mitigating Foreign Election Interference

    President Donald Trump has repeatedly shown that he does not take the issue of Russian interference in elections seriously, most recently at the G-20 summit in Japan when he issued a “wink-wink” warning to Russian President Vladimir Putin when pressed on the issue by reporters. This is no laughing matter. While much of the media coverage has focused on Russian interference in U.S. elections, this is not just an American problem. As our new report on online foreign influence efforts (FIEs) demonstrates, this is a global problem. Since 2013, Russia has conducted at least 38 distinct influence campaigns targeting 19 different countries—and Russia isn’t alone: 53 distinct online FIEs were launched by Russia and other countries between 2013 and the end of 2018, and several remain ongoing today. Russia is by far the most active state conducting FIEs. About 72 percent of the campaigns were conducted solely by Russia, which had 29 distinct operations ongoing in 2017.