Posted on 07/19/2018 3:05:37 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
Microsoft disclosed Thursday that it identified and helped thwart hacking attempts on three congressional candidates earlier this year, marking the first publicly known hacking efforts targeting candidates in the 2018 midterm elections.
“Earlier this year, we did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s vice president for security and trust, said 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,” he added.
Burt said that Microsoft and the government were able to take the domain down and block the phishing messages.
The executive did not disclose the names of the candidates targeted 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.”
Hackers used a similar strategy to make their way into Democratic National Committee servers in 2016.
Burt did not specify if Microsoft believed the hackers were Russian. He did, however, say that analysts had reported fewer instances of Russian hacking attempts than in 2016.
“The consensus of the threat intelligence community right now is that we’re not seeing the same level of activity by the Russian activity groups,” he said. “We don’t see the activity of them trying to infiltrate think tanks and academia and in social networks to do the research that they do to build the phishing attacks.”
Burt noted though that “that doesn’t mean we’re not going to see it. There’s a lot of time left before the election.”
If it's not Russia, who else would be trying to hack systems?
Could it be as simple as some kid in his bedroom testing his hacking skills? Or state actors?
China
Yes are the D party, crap who knows even if they find out they will lie about it
Iran
North Korea
Cuba
Israel
the EU
Yes, those massive attacks in 2016 were just very troubling.
Why there were so many of them, we’ve found a grand total of 12 people to charge after 17 months of furious effort.
Hey, who was it who hacked Angela Merkels phone calls and messages a while ago?
There is only one group that stands to benefit from hacking elections. If Russian hacking doesn’t change any votes, then, it’s likely somebody from the “inside” of the country, doing it from the outside to deflect attention from the real source of the hacking. Since republicans already control congress and the presidency, and most of the 57 states, the hacker(s) isn’t republican.
The DNC
But....how can that be? Only Russia is our enemy, right?
Why there were so many of them,
Have you met a single voter whose vote was influenced by them?
For example, in Dec, after the Nov 2016 election, a Tea Party activist in FL was snookered by a Russian ad... believe it or not the Russians spent more money in 2016 after the election than in 2016 before the election.
But I have yet to hear of a single person who was influenced by the Russians before the election.
in contrast, we can point to who and what did influence the voters. The #1 person driving pro-2A voters to Trump was none other than Hillary herself.
The #1 person driving religious right to Trump was a Townhall June 24 article by Wayne Allyn Root. That article was forwarded to more prayer lists and church friends than any other I know of. Its rationale was the rationale of all the other Evangelicals who from June 25 to November.
We can honestly say with ample evidence that the above 2 got Trump elected.
But is there one, just one, voter who was influenced by the Russians? Name that person.
It doesn’t matter “who” because the attempts were made on Republicans .... which they can’t disclose because then the focus would point AGAIN to hillary.
Unless you do that, this is just fake news and probably lies.
From the description it sounds more just like identity theft phishing. Not "election hacking".
ROFLMAO, that is a great image!
Hillary Clinton...
She was influenced to give Russia uranium for millions in donations. (I believe it was)
I’ll have to be honest though. I doubt it changed her vote.
“:^)
Naw, couldn’t happen or that’s what the Kenyan told us.
anyone who has ever managed a server knows that it is harder to find a server that doesn’t have a hack attempt from Russia than it is to find one that does.
The fact that the servers were attacked doesn’t mean squat in and of itself.
Bernie Google?
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