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Microsoft Reveals First Known Midterm Campaign Hacking Attempts (politico.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft detected and helped block hacking attempts against three congressional candidates this year, a company executive said Thursday, marking the first known example of cyber interference in the midterm elections. "Earlier this year, we did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks," said Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president for security and trust, at the Aspen Security Forum. "And we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for election in the midterm elections."
Burt declined to name the targets but said they were "people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint as well as an election disruption standpoint." Microsoft took down the fake domain and worked with the federal government to block the phishing messages.
Burt declined to name the targets but said they were "people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint as well as an election disruption standpoint." Microsoft took down the fake domain and worked with the federal government to block the phishing messages.
But Trump said they weren't hacking us..............
As the electorate that pursues their greed and cruelty to such a degree, that they would throw away the any pretense of defending democracy in the face of open attack.
That's like 42% of likely voters.
What happened to America. I'm not a democrat myself - I'm just amazed that this is what conservatism has allowed itself to become. Beyond any ideals, just driven by cruelty to hurting the other side, at all costs.
Ryan Fenton
It isn't not unfake news... or something. NO COLLUSION!
do you mean why is a voting system on windows? that is not what was reported. garden variety phishing with a landing domain that looks like Microsoft. has nothing to do with a voting system.
nothing to see here - move along
create misleading domain, send phishes, catch morons ("...I don't know them, I wasn't expecting an attachment, I think i'll open it!..."), infect machines, repeat.
nothing to see here - move along
are there ANY IT people as early commenters on threads here? or are there too many non IT people in here who simply don't know what sysadmins face day to day?
come on now - Hacking 'news' is the latest Red Scare.
*sigh*
and what would you have them do ? Get eviscerated by the MSM holy inquisition ? Perfect is the enemy of good. But of course there is one current of thought that dreams of utopias all day long, and it's not conservatism.
I am not american but it seems nothing new here... the US have never fully figured out that the Russian Empire is equal or worse than say Nazi Germany. Bush jr didn't get it, Obanana didn't get it, Hillary didn't get it (reset button lol) so pretty much nothing new here.....
A fake domain for phishing is not a campaign hacking attempt.
Trump was the only one saying the election was going to be hacked during the election.
Hillary, the DNC and CNN were all saying it couldn't happen.
After Trump won, suddenly it was Russian hacking 24/7.
After Trump won, suddenly he does an about face and says there was no meddling in the election.
One side changed their stance based on evidence. Well... I guess they both did.
Trump is the president, election meddling or not. Please STOP talking about Hilary and the DNC. It's past, gone, they lost.
It has nothing to do with them anymore. All that matters now is how our president handles things. Which is embarassing.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Hi,
we are a US ally. Not going away any time soon. Nobody alienated except those who were from the start so. Please park a few batallions here, he have nice looking women also.
K, thx, bye.
What "attack"? $100K in Facebook ads that primarily contained existing democratic talking points (gun control, BLM, etc), and that even the tainted Mueller investigation can't prove affected anything at all? The only thing they managed to do is sow division and boost identity politics, but as the past 2 years have shown, the Democratic party excels at that even without any Russian help.
I mean the US State Dept _re-elected Yeltsin_ in Russia, and done so openly, in broad daylight. They've also funneled money into opposition, mostly through USAID "helping" anti-government NGOs. A couple of years ago Russia passed the same law as the US: such NGOs now have to register as "foreign agents", so now money flows under the table. That's an "attack on democracy" (which did briefly exist in Russia back then). Dozens of regime changes all over the world, at least three in just this century (Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, Syria was attempted but failed). Funding and arming ISIS. Those are far more egregious offenses than $100K in FB ads and a few thousand Twitter bots that just stir shit up. You could accuse me of "whataboutism", and you'd have a point, but I'd just like to point out that the US is not an innocent party here. If you think there are no US operatives in Russia "trying to affect elections", formenting dissent and division, etc, I suggest that you think again. This is simply a weak-ass attempt at a symmetric response.
The US press portrays Putin as a genius spy mastermind, and Russian intelligence services as the CIA/NSA's peer or superior, but in reality neither of those things are true, and the net result of this worship is that they boost Putin's image and ego way out of proportion to reality.
Truth is, his intelligence services kind of suck ass and are technologically inept (DNC "hack" was just a phishing attack -- that's the level of a US teenager as far as hacks are concerned). Putin himself doesn't really decide much in the world. He has a decent military, but military doesn't really give you much in peacetime (aside from having longer "peacetime" than would be possible otherwise), economy and trade matter a lot more, and while both have improved dramatically under Putin, there's a widespread perception in Russia that he could have achieved a heck of a lot more. And even if he "has something on Trump", I'm sure Trump has a lot more on him now that he's the president.
TL;DR: STFU with this "they attacked our democracy" until the US stops brazenly interfering in other countries affairs.
24 years ago I installed my first copy of Slackware. The moment I got that PC online, it logged break in attempts.
You don't really need a pronouncement from Microsoft to know that all manner of miscreants are trying to break into pretty much everywhere.
This is a generalized computer security problem that's been turned into a political circus that largely distracts from the real issues that aren't limited to politicians or elections.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Hey friend, over here Dude.
It's not as upsetting of course as the fact that the Republican and "Democratic" (hahaha) Party of the United States has been hacking into and interfering in US elections since before I was born, but...
Don't get me wrong. I am very concerned and unhappy with external governments and intelligence services interfering in our elections, but I am much more concerned with the domestic ones doing it, since that's how they hold onto power despite the fact that they are almost universally loathed by the people whom they claim to derive their 'just power' to rule from the consent of. When Congress has a single-digit approval rating, and incumbents win reelection like, 70 or 80 percent of the time when they run... yeah, there's a problem. Russian interference is bad, but it's nothing compared to "Americans"* pouring billions upon billions of dollars into elections, bribing (oh, sorry, we're supposed to refer to it as campaign donations, or "speech" (hahahahhaha) yeah right,) our so-called "elected" officials.
* (Consider this: how American can one be when owning property all around the world, doing business in other countries with enemies of the United States, and acting as if he or she (haha, they're almost all "he") don't give a shit about AmericA, or AmericANS? The distinction is increasingly looking light on difference.)
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
She's still trying, and considering the current rabid protests against Trump maintaining peace with Russia, she's doing so quite actively.
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