FBI director: U.S. should expect Russian interference in 2018, 2020 elections

James Comey expects that Russian intelligence services will launch hacking and influence operations against the 2018 congressional and 2020 presidential elections after finding success in 2016.

FBI Director James Comey expects that Russian intelligence services will launch similar influence operations against the 2018 congressional and 2020 presidential elections after finding success in 2016.

“They’ll be back,” said Comey, who spoke Monday before the House Intelligence Committee. “They’ll be back in 2020. They may be back in 2018. One of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful because they introduced chaos and division and discord and sewed doubt about the nature of this amazing country of ours and our democratic process.”

Russian attempts to “undermine the credibility” of American democracy, as Comey described it, differed last year from past cases of Kremlin interference.

NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers, who also testified Monday alongside Comey, said that the biggest difference evident in 2016 was the leaking of documents online and the resulting spread through media channels.

“A big difference to me in the past was while there was cyber activity, you never saw — in previous elections — information being published in such a massive scale that had been physically removed both from private individuals as well as organizations associated with the democratic process, both inside the government and outside the government,” Rogers said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence authored a declassified intelligence report in January concerning Russian hacking and influence operations aimed at the 2016 presidential election.

U.S. intelligence agencies stated in the ODNI report that Russian intelligence officials under the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin had stolen information held by U.S. political campaigns and organizations, think tanks and lobbying groups. Select information was leaked in an attempt to specifically discredit then democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and the credibility of election results writ large.

Monday’s high-profile public hearing largely focused on the alleged connections between allies of President Donald Trump and the Russian government. Comey and Rogers, for their part, divulged few new details except to say that an investigation into the matter is ongoing.

U.S. agencies say Iranian hackers tried to pass ‘non-public’ Trump campaign docs to Biden’s campaign

According to a joint statement from CISA, ODNI and the FBI, there is no evidence that anyone from Biden’s campaign responded to the offer.

Lawmakers fret over who will report foreign election interference 

After a sleepy primary season, Russia enters 2024 U.S. election fray

Government

• FBI officials say AI is bolstering adversaries, emphasizing need to focus on cyber basics, patching

• Feds accuse China of ‘systematic’ distillation of U.S. AI models

• CIA’s Michael Ellis says cyber intelligence is changing how the agency operates

• The G7 tells industry to hurry up and prep for post-quantum encryption

Technology

• European parliament members call for slowdown of Serbia’s EU entry over spyware use

• FCC proposes public scorecard to rate telecoms on anti-robocall efforts

• Pegasus, NoviSpy variant spyware found on devices of Serbian activists

• Wyden seeks upgraded NSA security guidance on commercial VPN use

Threats

• Microsoft discloses two actively exploited zero-days among 974 vulnerabilities

• Russian national extradited to US for alleged involvement in bank-account takeover scheme

• Attackers exploit zero-days in consistently besieged SonicWall product

• Jail time for Maine child in 764 marks turning point in federal law enforcement

Policy

• Whistleblower says USPS deploying new, ‘untested’ IT systems governing mail-in ballots

• ‘Watershed 250’ test program in Texas looks to private sector for water cybersecurity help

• Former sexual abuse victims say Grok used their images, videos to train deepfake capabilities

• Cyber threats nudge Trump to sign executive order on foreign equipment in U.S. energy infrastructure