Tag Archive for: trumps

The Cybersecurity 202: Trump’s former homeland security adviser says Russia remains major election hacking threat

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Adversaries might also interfere with state and county systems that report vote tallies to sow mistrust in official results, said Bossert, who is now president of Trinity Cyber.

Bossert’s concerns stand in sharp contrast to Trump, who has largely ignored or downplayed the threat of Russian interference in the election, claiming without evidence that a greater threat is posed by domestic fraud from mail ballots. 

But foreign interference would pay dividends for adversaries including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bossert said — even if it doesn’t result in corrupting the entire election process or delivering a reelection victory to Tump, which U.S. intelligence agencies say Putin prefers. 

“The analysis for the Russians is win-win,” he told me. “They’ll either persuade the U.S. electorate to reelect President Trump, which President Putin views as a positive development for his interests, or they will sully or in some way undermine or discredit the incoming [Joe] Biden presidency, which is also in Putin’s interests.” 

Bossert is also concerned Trump and senior officials may not be willing to level with the public if foreign interference is detected in the election.

He pointed to Trump’s admission to Bob Woodward he had intentionally downplayed the dangers of the coronavirus during its early months because he didn’t want to panic the American people. 

“That’s the wrong instinct in a crisis,” he said, warning a similar move to play down election interference could have dire consequences. 

“If the instinct on anybody’s part in this administration is to undersell or even mislead us about the extent of foreign intelligence operations, I think they will end up regretting it,” he said, “because the long-term effect of that will be to further erode public trust, not to further preserve it.”

Bossert has previously criticized Trump and White House officials over Trump’s urging the Ukrainian president to help dig up dirt on Biden, which led to the president’s impeachment, and over his handling of the pandemic. He previously served in the George W. Bush White House.  

His warnings come as government officials are projecting confidence about the security of the…

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Hackers disguise malware attack as new details on Donald Trump’s COVID-19 illness

/in

The confirmation that US President Donald Trump has been infected by the Coronavirus, and had to spend time this weekend in hospital, has – understandably – made headlines around the world. And there are plenty of people, on both sides of the political divide, who are interested in learning more about his health status. It’s no surprise, therefore, to discover that cybercriminals are exploiting that interest with the intention of infecting users’ computers. Read more in my article on the Tripwire State of Security blog.
Graham Cluley

“Yourefired” was Donald Trump’s Twitter password, claim hackers

/in

According to Dutch magazine, three ethical hackers were able to determine Donald Trump’s Twitter password while he was running his US Presidential campaign. A password that had been exposed years before following the notorious LinkedIn hack.
Graham Cluley

Apparently The New Litmus Test For Trump’s FCC: Do You Promise To Police Speech Online

/in

Last month we wrote about how President Trump withdrew the renomination of FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly just days after O’Rielly dared to [checks notes] reiterate his support for the 1st Amendment in a way that hinted at the fact that he knew Trump’s executive order was blatantly unconstitutional. Some people argued the renomination was pulled for other reasons, but lots of people in DC said it was 100% about his unwillingness to turn the FCC into a speech police for the internet.

While it seems quite unlikely that Trump can get someone new through the nomination process before the election, apparently they’re thinking of nominating someone who appears eager to do the exact opposite: Nathan Simington, who wants the FCC to be the internet speech police so bad that he helped draft the obviously unconstitutional executive order in response to the President’s freak-out at being fact checked.

Three sources close to the matter say Nathan Simington, a senior advisor at the NTIA within the commerce department, has emerged as a leading candidate to take over Republican Commissioner Mike O’Rielly’s seat at the FCC.

Simington is said to have helped draft the administration’s social media executive order, and his nomination would be a victory for Republicans who want to see the FCC take a larger role in regulating social networks.

You can see the Trumpian logic here: “O’Rielly gently pushed back the tiniest bit on our plan to ignore the 1st Amendment and compel social media companies to host the propaganda and disinformation we spew, so let’s replace him with someone who supports that singularly stupid argument. How about the guy who drafted the executive order!”

The idea that “will you support the FCC being the speech police” is now the Republican litmus test for being an FCC Commissioner is a freakish 180 from the history of Republican FCC Commissioners who have spent decades arguing against that on the things they actually have authority over (with the notable exception of obscenity, which GOP Commissioners have, at times, wanted to police). Either way, this seems like yet another example of the Republican party not having any core principles other than punishing the companies and people that Trump doesn’t like.

Techdirt.