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Iowa Caucus results delayed, link to mobile app problems is unclear (updated)
Technology is already creating hiccups for the 2020 election mere hours into the caucuses. Democratic county chairs in Iowa told Bloomberg that precinct chairs were having problems downloading or signing into the mobile app used to tabulate and share results from the roughly 1,700 sites. They could still provide results through a phone line, but the problems threatened to delay reporting on results for hours.
Apple News partners on a presidential debate for the first time in February
Apple isn't just offering in-depth election news -- for 2020, it'll have a degree of participation in the process. Apple News will partner on its first political debate on February 7th, when it cooperates with ABC and WMUR-TV for the eighth Democratic debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. Apple hasn't outlined just what it will do as part of its co-hosting duties (we've asked it for details), but it's safe to presume that the debate will receive priority coverage in the News app.
The Mueller report is out: Read it here
The long-awaited Mueller report is finally out, and you can download it for your lunchtime reading if you have a ton of time to kill. Titled "Report on investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election," the PDF file is 139 megabytes large, 448 pages long and from the table of contents, we can tell it goes into all the territory we expected it to cover.
DNC cyberattack scare was just a phishing test
Yesterday, reports surfaced that the Democratic National Committee had been the target of a phishing scheme aimed at collecting officials' login information for a voter database. But it turns out the incident was just a security test. "We, along with the partners who reported the [fake] site, now believe it was built by a third party as part of a simulated phishing test on VoteBuilder," DNC Chief Security Officer Bob Lord said in a statement to the Washington Post. "The test, which mimicked several attributes of actual attacks on the Democratic party's voter file, was not authorized by the DNC, Votebuilder nor any of our vendors," he said.
DNC reports attempted cyberattack targeting its voter database
The Democratic National Committee appears to be the target of another cybersecurity attack, CNN reports, and it has alerted the FBI about a phishing attempt aimed at gaining access to its voter database. A fake login page created to look just like the one Democratic officials use to log into a service called Votebuilder was spotted by a the cybersecurity firm Lookout earlier this week. Lookout then informed the DNC of its findings.
Democratic National Committee serves Wikileaks a summons on Twitter
You'll have to be creative to serve a secretive online organization like Wikileaks whose founder is hiding out in a foreign embassy. It definitely became an issue for the Democratic National Committee, which filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the group for the role it played in the 2016 cyberattack that targeted the political party. Now, the DNC has finally served the organization, and you can even see it for yourself... because it all went down on Twitter.
Democrats don't want candidates to use ZTE and Huawei phones
Huawei might have taken Apple's place as the second largest smartphone seller in the world, but that doesn't mean everyone's a fan now. According to CNN, the Democratic National Committee has warned candidates running in November against using devices from Huawei and fellow Chinese manufacturer ZTE. DNC chief security officer Bob Lord apparently wrote a warning for members that says: "It's very important that party and campaign workers not use ZTE or Huawei devices, even if the price is low or free."
DNC-led Def Con event tests election websites against child hackers
At the Def Con hacker conference next week, the Democratic National Committee is co-sponsoring a contest that will pit child hackers against replicas of state government websites, Wired reports. Kids between the ages of eight and 16 will try to break into replicas of the websites secretaries of state use to post election results, and the one that devises the best defensive strategy will win $500 from the DNC. Another $2,000 will be awarded to whoever can penetrate a site's defenses. The University of Chicago and a non-profit called r00tz Asylum that offers cybersecurity lessons for children are also sponsoring the event.
What legacy will WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leave behind?
"Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta's emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?" Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Wikileaks founder, editor-in-chief and self-styled leader Julian Assange during a televised interview.
US indicts 12 Russian intel officers for hacking Democrats in 2016
Special counsel Robert Mueller and his team have received an indictment for 12 Russian intelligence for hacking Democrats leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The spies are accused of digitally infiltrating the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign, along with stealing information of 500,000 US voters, and releasing emails with the express purpose of influencing the election.
How France beat Russian meddling (and we could, too)
Since we're all expecting Kanye West to be a Supreme Court justice by Monday, it will surprise no one to find out that the completely normal, perfectly-operating administration in the White House is blowing off a new threat of interference and hacking in the upcoming elections. "Robert Mueller and the nation's top intelligence official say Russia is trying to interfere in the midterm elections," Politico reported, "but Republican and Democratic lawmakers say the Trump administration is keeping them in the dark about whether the U.S. is ready."
DNC launches a marketplace for digital election tools
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) wants to reposition the Democrats as politics' most pioneering party. Today, it announces I Will Run, a marketplace for software, services and training designed to make Democratic campaigns more engaging and effective in a world that's come to rely on the internet for everything, including politics.
DNC sues Russia, Trump campaign and WikiLeaks over 2016 hack
While Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election continues, the Democratic National Committee has decided to take action of its own. According to the Washington Post, the DNC this morning filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit accusing (among others) the Russian government, WikiLeaks and key officials inside Donald Trump's presidential campaign of computer fraud, racketeering, data theft and more, all in hopes of swaying the outcome of a presidential election.
Dutch intelligence had a front-row seat to Russian DNC hack
Of all the ways Russia attempted to exert influence over the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and party officials was arguably one of the most damaging blows to the Clinton campaign. And according to an investigation by Dutch media, the national intelligence agency of the Netherlands, AIVD, watched the whole thing play out. Anonymous American and Dutch sources tell the story of the AIVD infiltrating the computer network of a Moscow university building -- a network which just so happened to be used by Russian hacking group Cozy Bear, aka APT29.
DNC hires former Yahoo security chief in wake of 2016 hacks
The Democratic National Committee's (DNC) new chief security officer position has been filled, Wired reports. Bob Lord, who was previously Yahoo's chief information security officer prior to its acquisition by Verizon, will take over the position and will be working with both the national offices as well as smaller state offices. "I'll be working to protect my new colleagues at the DNC from the attackers who would prefer to keep us distracted from our mission of getting Democrats across the nation elected," Lord said in a statement. "And my job doesn't stop at the front door of the building -- my team and I will work with state parties to update their information security strategies and deployments to change the economics for the attackers."
Russian hackers had hundreds of US targets in addition to the DNC
Various US agencies continue to look into the role Russia played in last year's presidential election, and targets of those investigations include interactions between Trump advisors and Russian officials, ads purchased by Russian agents through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and whether the Kremlin was involved in the DNC email hacks of last year. In regards to the latter, Russia has been suspected of being behind the hacks for quite some time and just this week, reports have surfaced that the US Department of Justice has pinpointed six Russian officials it believes to have been involved in the hacks. However, a report released today by the Associated Press suggests that the group behind the DNC email breaches actually had a much wider range of targets.
US could charge six Russian officials over DNC email hacking
Is Russia's hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails a "hoax," as Donald Trump maintains? The US Department of Justice reportedly doesn't think so. It has identified six Russian government officials involved in hacking the DNC and using the information against candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. Prosecutors have enough evidence to bring charges against those individuals by next year, according to a report from the WSJ.
House Democrats adopt encrypted messaging after last year's hack
In light of last year's hacking troubles, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has begun using end-to-end encrypted software for a large chunk of its messaging. For communication both internally and between the DCCC and 20 of its House incumbent campaigns, the committee will use Wickr.
South Carolina hit with 150,000 Election Day hacking attempts
More information about the scale of attempted election hacks has been released and it involves a rather surprising target -- South Carolina. Donald Trump took the state by 54.9 percent and there was never any doubt that he had the advantage in the historically republican-swinging South Carolina. However, even with almost certain projected results, the state's voter-registration system was hit with nearly 150,000 hack attempts.
DNC hires ex-Uber engineer as its chief technology officer
The Democratic National Committee has selected ex-Twitter VP Raffi Krikorian as its chief technology officer. Krikorian was until recently the senior director of engineering at Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, but left the company in February.
