Donald Trump not only appears to embrace Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, he has done nothing to prevent Russian cyber attacks on the midterm elections. Heads of the U.S. intelligence communities have been doing all they can, and they have urged POTUS to lead the charge, but to no avail. Now, the private sector has picked up the torch of democracy and run with it.
What the president and other members of the GOP do not seem to grasp is that this hacking is neither Republican nor Democratic. Countries who hack this the U.S. are not partisan, they just want to topple our government — hacking is an act of war.
Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) interrupted six internet domains run by Russia’s Fancy Bear aka Strontium and APT28. Thus far, it has shut down 84 fake websites meant to mimic real websites in the past two years. Some of these mimic conservative sites.
Russians and other foreign enemies of America hack for two reasons. The first is espionage. The second is to weaponize information by embarrassing candidates and/or sowing confusion and discord among the public.
Moscow wants to undermine Democratic values and broaden the divisions that already exist within this country. It has taken civil liberties issues and cleverly exploited them.
Microsoft has been proactive and aggressive in its attempts to detect these bad Russian actors. It realized that hackers’ goals are to spread disinformation, probe for information, and basically “tamper with voting systems.”
Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program has four priorities:
‘Protecting campaigns from hacking, protecting voting and the electoral process, increasing political advertising transparency, and defending against disinformation campaigns. In the coming months, we will offer AccountGuard in additional countries, as we continue to invest in and evolve other aspects of the Defending Democracy Program.’
In addition, Microsoft is very concerned about the 2018 elections:
‘We’re concerned that these and other attempts pose security threats to a broadening array of groups connected with both American political parties in the run-up to the 2018 elections. That’s why today we are expanding Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program with a new initiative called Microsoft AccountGuard. This initiative will provide state-of-the-art cybersecurity protection at no extra cost to all candidates and campaign offices at the federal, state and local level, as well as think tanks and political organizations we now believe are under attack. The technology is free of charge to candidates, campaigns and related political institutions using Office 365.’
One of those websites that Russia attacked was the International Republican Institute whose board members include Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and former governor Mitt Romney (R-UT). Both have been critical of Trump, but the Russians may just be showing their bipartisanship. The conservative organization:
‘Promotes democratic principles and is led by a notable board of directors, including six Republican senators and a leading senatorial candidate. Another is similar to the domain used by the Hudson Institute, which hosts prominent discussions on topics including cybersecurity, among other important activities. Other domains appear to reference the U.S. Senate but are not specific to particular offices. To be clear, we currently have no evidence these domains were used in any successful attacks before the DCU transferred control of them, nor do we have evidence to indicate the identity of the ultimate targets of any planned attack involving these domains.’
As Microsoft warns, protecting our country means “vigilance:”
‘Democracy requires vigilance and at times action by citizens to protect and maintain it. No individual or company can hope to meet this imperative by itself. We all need to do our part. We’re committed to doing our part by helping to protect candidates and campaigns in preserving their voices and votes no matter what party they support.’
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
