Tag Archive for: Election

Iranian hackers that tampered with 2020 election could once again target U.S., FBI warns

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Written by AJ Vicens
Oct 21, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP

An Iranian hacking group accused of attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, and attacking an unnamed U.S. organization in early 2022, could once again be looking to infiltrate American targets, the FBI warned in a notice late Thursday.

The group identified as Emennet Pasargad has been using “false-flag campaigns under the guise of multiple personas” to target Israeli organizations in recent years and carry out hack-and-leak operations, the bureau said. The “FBI judges these techniques may be used to target US entities as seen during Emennet’s cyber-enabled information operation that targeted the 2020 US Presidential election.”

The warning comes as Iran faces dramatic internal protests raging for more than a month after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was detained by Iranian morality police over her public appearance, and subsequently died in police custody. Iranian leaders accuse the U.S. of using the crisis to destabilize the country, Reuters reported in September.

Thursday’s notice from the FBI included reference to “a destructive cyber attack against a U.S. organization” as evidence that “the group remains a cyber threat to the United States.”

The notice did not name the organization, but said the attack was a “means to target the Iranian opposition group The People’s Mujahedin (aka MEK).” That attack included the leaking of personally identifiable information and that the “activity resulted in destructive effects on victim infrastructure.”

The FBI on Friday declined to offer any additional detail related to this particular attack.

In late July, a hacktivist front group calling itself “Homeland Justice,” which researchers with Mandiant and then multiple governments have linked to Iran, attacked the government of Albania with destructive malware over its ongoing hosting of MEK members.

The government of Albania subsequently severed diplomatic ties with Iran over the affair, and the group continues to leak information stolen during the attack to its Telegram channel.

The Emennet Pasargad group has used at least…

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The Virgin trains swindler, cyber clowns, and AirTag election debacle • Graham Cluley

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Smashing Security podcast #294: The Virgin trains swindler, cyber clowns, and AirTag election debacle

Someone’s election-fiddling is uncovered with an Apple AirTag, a cyber scandal rocks Germany, and a swindler steals a fortune due to trains being delayed.

All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of the award-winning “Smashing Security” podcast by computer security veterans Graham Cluley and Carole Theriault, joined this week by runZero’s Chris Kirsch.

Plus don’t miss our featured interview with Akamai’s Patrick Sullivan talking about bots in the retail sector.




Hosts:

Graham Cluley – @gcluley
Carole Theriault – @caroletheriault

Guest:

Chris Kirsch – @chris_kirsch

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Theme tune: “Vinyl Memories” by Mikael Manvelyan.
Assorted sound effects: AudioBlocks.

Found this article interesting? Follow Graham Cluley on Twitter to read more of the exclusive content we post.


Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus industry having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent security analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of computer…

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What security procedures are in place for the 2022 election?

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The Hamilton County Board of Elections gets questions from the public about the 2020 election and election security every day, even almost two years later.

As the 2022 election nears, the number of emails and public records requests from members of the public regarding the 2020 election have spiked, said Alex Linser, the board’s deputy director. In the past two weeks, they have averaged about three a day, he said.

“There are two common themes that we receive, distrust of the voting machines, and the other seeking reproduction of all of the documents created in the 2020 election,” Linser said. The latter, which includes every ballot ID envelope, costs $75,000 to copy every sheet. No one has taken the board of elections up on that offer, Linser said.

Zach Cox, Hamilton County Board of Elections worker, prepping voter booths at the Hamilton County Board of Elections in Norwood.

Learn about the US voting rights in all 50 states before the 2022 midterm elections with the USA TODAY Network’s searchable voters’ rights database.

It’s not just Hamilton County. Backers of former President Donald Trump and his false claims of a stolen 2020 election have swamped the boards of election in more than two dozen states and counties all across Ohio, the Washington Post, National Public Radio and other news agencies reported.

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Video shows ‘unauthorized access’ to Ga. election equipment

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A former Republican Party official in Georgia who was a fake elector in 2020 misrepresented her role in an alleged breach of voting equipment at a rural elections office two months after the last presidential election, a court filing says.

The filing late Monday is part of a broader lawsuit challenging the security of the state’s voting machines that has been drawn into a separate investigation of former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in Georgia.

Interior security camera video from the Coffee County elections office shows Cathy Latham, the county Republican Party chair at the time, welcomed a computer forensics team when it arrived on Jan. 7, 2021, introduced the team to local election officials and spent nearly all day there. She also instructed the team what to copy, which turned out to be “virtually every component of the voting system,” the filing says. The video directly refutes Latham’s testimony in a sworn deposition and her representations in filings with the court, the document states.

The filing comes in response to Latham’s attorneys’ attempt to quash subpoenas for her personal electronic devices, including any cellphones, computers and storage devices.

Robert Cheeley, an attorney for Latham, did not respond to an email seeking comment. He previously said his client doesn’t remember all the details of that day. But he said she “would not and has not knowingly been involved in any impropriety in any election” and “has not acted improperly or illegally.”

Latham said in a deposition last month that she moved to Texas over the summer. In January 2021, she was chair of the Coffee County Republican Party and was the state party caucus chair for more than 125 of Georgia’s smaller counties. Latham also was one of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a certificate in December 2020 falsely stating that Trump had won the state and declaring that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.

Trump in fact lost Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes to Democrat Joe Biden. The investigation into Trump’s efforts to change the results includes a phone call he made to the Georgia secretary of state, a…

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