After Mueller, Senate Intel Reports on Russian Election Hacks
Wednesday brought hints of what was to come. But now we have the Senate Intel Committee’s report on how Russia sought to influence the 2016 elections, how it might do it again in 2020 and how we can stop it.
The redacted report plays a bit of blame game, and bandies some buzzwords, such as “port scan” and “SQL injection,” but seems a bit light on specifics. But, it is at least only the first part of the story.
Meanwhile, it looks like Russia isn’t the only adversary we should worry about. In today’s SB Blogwatch, we look forward to 2020.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: tears in r-r-r-rain.
Голосуй за Меня
What’s the craic? Ryan Lucas Considers All The Things—“Senate Intel Committee Unveils Election Security Report”:
[The] committee has released its report detailing Russia’s targeting of election systems in 2016 [and] recommendations for protecting American elections from foreign interference. [It] followed … Robert Mueller’s stark warning to lawmakers on Wednesday that Russia’s sprawling influence operation of 2016 was not a one-and-done. … “They’re doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”
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[It] started as early as 2014 when Russian operatives traveled to the U.S. on an intelligence-gathering mission. … Those efforts included the hacking of Democratic Party computer systems, a social media disinformation campaign to sow discord among Americans and the probing of … the election systems of 21 states.
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In 2016, the U.S. political and election system also were slow to respond. [The] committee says that must change [and] provides several recommendations to help protect America’s elections.
Also, Gregg Re and Catherine Herridge are Fair And Balanced—“Senate report on 2016 election interference faults FBI”:
The partially redacted report also faulted the FBI and … DHS for providing inadequate warnings to state governments. … Alerts often went to the wrong people or contained insufficient information, and blended in with previous general warnings: … “They provided no clear reason for states to take this threat more seriously than any other alert received.”
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[It] comes on the heels of Robert Mueller’s at times weary testimony on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, when the former special counsel warned that “many more countries are developing capabilities to replicate” Moscow’s activities. … A major purpose of Russia’s involvement may have been to cause hysteria, and affect America’s confidence in democracy.
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One state, which the report did not identify … reported that “cyber actors” had scanned “the entire state IT infrastructure … but the ‘affected systems’ were the Secretary of State’s web application and the election results website.” … DHS reported that GRU [Russian] actors … then unsuccessfully attempted many SQL injection attacks.
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The GOP-controlled Senate killed several election-security bills that had been pushed by Democrats in the hours after Mueller’s testimony, including a bill to provide $775 million to enhance election system security. … Republicans have said the money was already allocated from a prior bill.
But wait. There’s more. As Jonathan Shieber notes, this is just the “first volume of its investigation”:
[It’s] the first volume of [a] bipartisan investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. elections. … Among the Committee’s findings were that Russian hackers exploited the seams between federal and state authorities.
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DHS needs to coordinate its efforts with state officials much more closely. But states need to do more as well to ensure that new voting machines have a voter-verified paper trail. [And] Congress needs to evaluate the results of the $380 million in state security grants which were issued under the Help America Vote Act and ensure that additional funding is available to address any security gaps. … Finally, the U.S. needs to create more appropriate deterrence mechanisms.
Why stop at Russia? Craig Timberg and Tony Romm—“It’s not just the Russians anymore”:
Alicia Hernan — whose Twitter account described her as a wife, mother and lover of peace — did not mince words about her feelings for President Trump. [Her] March 16 tweet … was not the work of an American voter venting her frustration. The account … was what disinformation researchers call a “sock puppet”.
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It was Iranians, not Russians, who created @AliciaHernan3, complete with a picture of a blonde woman. … It was one of more than 7,000 phony accounts from Iran that Twitter has shut down this year alone.
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And Iran is far from the only nation that has … substantial capacity to wage … influence operations in the United States ahead of next year’s election. … Robert S. Mueller [testified] “many more countries” had developed similar capabilities, based in part on the Russian playbook. [They] include Saudi Arabia, Israel, China, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela, researchers say.
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In a related trend, online mercenaries have begun offering information operations as a commercial service. Facebook shut down 265 accounts from an Israeli company, Archimedes Group, in May for seeking to manipulate elections through social media targeting voters in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia.
Sock it to me. Stanford Prof. Michael McFaul ain’t no puppet:
Confirmed by Mueller yesterday: “we still have little transparency about the economic ties between Russian actors and U.S. candidates and their campaign officials.” … There are lots of practical, nonpartisan steps that the USG, Congress, and the private sector could take to enhance our election integrity in 2020.
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Protecting American votes is a simple, patriotic idea that everyone should get get behind. … What is more democratic than having Americans – not Iranians, Russians, or other hackers – decide who our president should be?
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Congress has done something … to protect our elections, appropriating $380 million in 2018 to enhance the security of our election infrastructure. [But] none of the new acts – Honest Ads, DETER, FIRE, PAVE, etc. – have become law.
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I get it that it’s now Republican gospel to not do anything anti-Putin. But why are they not afraid of Iranian, Chinese, or Silicon Valley high-school hackers who might also want to see chaos on Election Day?
So do we blame the Dems or the GOP? XXongo wishes a plague on both their houses:
Elections are controlled at the state level, not the federal level. Republicans currently control the legislatures in 31 states (while Democrats hold 18).
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I have a thought: Why don’t we fix all of the insecure systems, regardless of which state is controlled by which party? … It’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. It’s everybody’s problem.
Of course, the U.S. would never do this to other countries, right? belorn sounds forlorn: [You’re fired—Ed.]
A few years ago there were a bunch of leaks from inside NSA by Snowden. One of of the leaks documented how NSA had hacked into core telecom routers of a country in the middle of a civil war.
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The US would be in … many wars if everything NSA did should be seen as acts of war and treated as such. They even hacked the UN.
And then there’s the thorny issue of voting machines. edi_guy flip-flops thuswise:
After the 2000 election fiasco I was a strong proponent of digitizing the whole thing. “Why the heck do we have to go through this nonsense, we can know the results almost instantly.”
But over time as I saw how ridiculously bad the security was on election machines [and] the true incompetence of local election officials … I’ve reversed course.
I’m either for a moonshot style effort of making the most secure, transparent, digital voting process possible. … Or paper ballots.
The latter is annoying, but intrinsically safer due to the distributed nature, and essentially air-gapping. Well worth the miniscule cost and annoyance.
The former I would only do if it were carried out literally like an Apollo project where you are pulling experts from many fields to put something new together. And not in secret, but out for the whole world to see and try to crack.
And not running Windows ME.
But Jess Austin pens a jeremiad:
People of good faith have been warning of the flaws in election infrastructure since long before Obama.
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There are lots of flaws with voting machines: closed source, no tangible verifiable records, confusing for voters, etc. There are lots of flaws with voting in general: voters removed for specious reasons, greater inconvenience for poor voters, one-party-two-heads, etc.
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It’s too bad that Congress won’t pass Tulsi’s bill that would require recountable paper records.
Meanwhile, K. S. Kyosuke giggles from across the Atlantic:
Your election system is a piece of ****. Learn to use a pencil and paper and count by hand like all the grownups who care about voting integrity.
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How do you replace the contents of over ten thousand locked ballot boxes in over ten thousand places without anyone noticing? … When groups of around six to eight different people [are] checking on each other … worst case is you recount.
And Finally:
Rootbeer Hauer, RIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrZJztzAvJE&t=50
Hat tip: David Pescovitz
You have been reading SB Blogwatch by Richi Jennings. Richi curates the best bloggy bits, finest forums, and weirdest websites… so you don’t have to. Hate mail may be directed to @RiCHi or [email protected]. Ask your doctor before reading. Your mileage may vary. E&OE.
Image source: DonkeyHotey (cc:by)
