Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

Russia, China and Iran trying to hack US presidential race, Microsoft says

Russia, China and Iran trying to hack US presidential race, Microsoft says

Hundreds of organisations and individuals targeted, including Trump and Biden campaigns, political parties, consultants and think tanks.

This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Tim Starks on politico.com
on September 10, 2020.

Russian, Chinese and Iranian hackers have mounted cyberattacks against hundreds of organisations and people involved in the 2020 presidential race and US-European policy debates, with targets including the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Microsoft said on Thursday.

The report is the most expansive public warning to date about the rapid spread of foreign governments' efforts to wield hackers to undermine US democracy.

The perpetrators include the same Kremlin-aligned Russian hacking group whose thefts and leaks of confidential Democratic Party documents helped torpedo Hillary Clinton’s presidential hopes in 2016, said Microsoft, which offers products designed to detect such attacks.


Supporters, one wearing a shirt with US President Donald Trump's face on it, attend a campaign event in North Carolina on Tuesday.


Targets this time include the Trump and Biden campaigns, administration officials and an array of national and state parties, political consultants and think tanks, as well as groups such as the German Marshall Fund and Stimson Centre that promote international cooperation.

“The activity we are announcing today makes clear that foreign activity groups have stepped up their efforts targeting the 2020 election as had been anticipated,” Microsoft said in a blog post. It added that its security tools detected and blocked “the majority of these attacks”.

The company did not answer numerous questions from POLITICO seeking more details about the attacks.

The revelations come amid a feud between congressional Democrats and the administration over what it knows about foreign threats against the election, in particular the Democrats' accusations that Trump's intelligence leaders are failing to alert the public about the Kremlin's activities.

Trump and his supporters have pushed a message that the Chinese are trying to help Biden – a claim not supported by intelligence officials, who have told POLITICO that Russia's efforts pose the most active and acute danger.

An official intelligence community statement last month said China prefers that Trump not be re-elected, that Russia is denigrating Biden and that Iran is undermining the president.

Some of the hackers' targets confirmed Microsoft's reporting, though none said the cyberattacks had succeeded.

“As President Trump’s re-election campaign, we are a large target, so it is not surprising to see malicious activity directed at the campaign or our staff,” said Thea McDonald, deputy press secretary for the president's campaign team.

“We work closely with our partners, Microsoft and others, to mitigate these threats. We take cybersecurity very seriously and do not publicly comment on our efforts.”

Likewise, the Republican National Committee has “been informed that foreign actors have made unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the technology of our staff members,” an RNC spokesperson said.

Biden's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Microsoft has also alerted SKDKnickerbocker, one of Biden’s chief communications and strategy firms, that Russian hackers had unsuccessfully targeted its networks, Reuters said early on Thursday ahead of the report's release. Those attempts also failed, Reuters reported. The firm did not respond to later requests for comment.

The attacks on the Stimson Centre were first observed in May, spokesperson David Solimini said, and Microsoft notified the think tank about the nature and source in late July. He and German Marshall Fund spokesperson Sydney Simon both said they had seen no evidence that the attacks succeeded.

Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said Microsoft's findings are “consistent with earlier statements by the Intelligence Community on a range of malicious cyber activities targeting the 2020 campaign”.

“It is important to highlight that none [of the targets] are involved in maintaining or operating voting infrastructure and there was no identified impact on election systems,” Krebs said in a statement. He added, “Everyone involved in the political process should stay alert against these sorts of attacks.”

The Treasury Department announced its own steps to combat Kremlin interference Thursday, saying it had designated the pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach for sanctions for promoting discredited allegations against Biden.

Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, confirmed that his group had been the target of apparently unsuccessful attacks from Chinese hackers, but cautioned that those did not appear election-related.

“It is not surprising that we would be targeted by China, based on the substance of our work,” Brookie said. “This appeared to be about information gathering and espionage as opposed to election interference of any kind.”

Among other details, Microsoft reported that:


The hacking group popularly known as Fancy Bear, which is linked to Russian military intelligence and played a major role in the 2016 attacks on Democrats, has gone after more than 200 organisations in recent months. The targets include political campaigns, national and state party organisations, consultants for both parties and think tanks. (The group is also known as APT28, and Microsoft refers to it as Strontium.)

A Chinese hacking group called Zirconium or APT31 has attacked high-profile people in Biden’s campaign and at least one prominent person in Trump’s campaign, the tech giant said.

Phosphorus, an Iranian hacker group often called Charming Kitten, has gone after Trump campaign staffers and administration officials.


Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks in a supporter’s backyard in Detroit on Wednesday.


Microsoft’s blog post said that it had blocked most of the attacks. The company’s analysis offered some new details on the hackers’ methods.

For instance, in 2016 the Russian group primarily relied on so-called spearphishing, which tricks victims into clicking on malicious email links to gain access to documents that it later released through outlets like WikiLeaks. But in recent months, Russia has shifted toward more crude “brute force” attacks and a technique called password spray, in which hackers input many passwords in a bid to guess their way into a system.

“Strontium also disguised these credential harvesting attacks in new ways, running them through more than 1,000 constantly rotating IP addresses, many associated with the Tor anonymising service,” wrote Tom Burt, corporate vice-president for customer security and trust.

“Strontium even evolved its infrastructure over time, adding and removing about 20 IPs per day to further mask its activity.”

This is far from the first time that a company in the cybersecurity business, not the federal government, has been the first to go public with details about major attacks against their customers by nation-states.

Previous examples include a landmark 2013 report by the cyber firm Mandiant on Chinese Army-connected hackers conducting cyber espionage against US critical infrastructure like the electrical power grid.

AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Trump Says Ukraine Can Fully Restore Borders with NATO Backing
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Germany Weighs Excluding France from Key European Fighter Jet Programme
Cyberattack Disrupts Check-in and Boarding Systems at Major European Airports
Björn Borg Breaks Silence: Memoir Reveals Addiction, Shame and Cancer Battle
When Extremism Hijacks Idealism: How the Baader-Meinhof Gang Emerged and Fell
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
Trump Orders $100,000 Fee on H-1B Visas and Launches ‘Gold Card’ Immigration Pathway
France’s Looming Budget Crisis and Political Fracture Raise Fears of Becoming Europe’s “Sick Man”
Three Russian MiG-31 Jets Breach Estonian Airspace in ‘Unprecedentedly Brazen’ NATO Incident
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Czech Republic signs €1.34 billion contract for Leopard 2A8 main battle tanks with delivery from 2028
Penske Media Sues Google Over “AI Overviews,” Claiming It Uses Journalism Without Consent and Destroys Traffic
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
One in Three Europeans Now Uses TikTok, According to the Chinese Tech Giant
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
NATO Deploys ‘Eastern Sentry’ After Russian Drones Violate Polish Airspace
The New Life of Novak Djokovic
German police raid AfD lawmaker’s offices in inquiry over Chinese payments
Volkswagen launches aggressive strategy to fend off Chinese challenge in Europe’s EV market
France Erupts in Mass ‘Block Everything’ Protests on New PM’s First Day
Poland Shoots Down Russian Drones in Airspace Violation During Ukraine Attack
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Macron Appoints Sébastien Lecornu as Prime Minister Amid Budget Crisis and Political Turmoil
Vatican hosts first Catholic LGBTQ pilgrimage
Apple Unveils iPhone 17 Series, iPhone Air, Apple Watch 11 and More at 'Awe Dropping' Event
France joins Eurozone’s ‘periphery’ as turmoil deepens, say investors
France Faces New Political Crisis, again, as Prime Minister Bayrou Pushed Out
Nayib Bukele Points Out Belgian Hypocrisy as Brussels Considers Sending Army into the Streets
France, at an Impasse, Heads Toward Another Government Collapse
×