Free Republic

Russian operatives created and amplified false online content attempting to smear Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, US intelligence agencies said on Tuesday. The content in question — which included manipulated audio content that circulated on the social media platform X in the last week — contained “several indicators of manipulation that are consistent with the influence efforts and tactics with Russian actors,” an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters on Tuesday. The statement was based on newly available intelligence and analysts worked over the weekend to analyze the media content, the official...

The unnamed Tennessee-based company that the Justice Department alleges was being funded by Russian operatives working as part of a Kremlin-orchestrated influence operation targeting the 2024 US election is Tenet Media, which is linked to right-wing commentators with millions of subscribers on YouTube and other social media platforms, according to a US official briefed on the matter. The indictment unsealed in New York’s Southern District accused two employees of RT, the Kremlin’s media arm, of funneling nearly $10 million to an unidentified company, described only as “Company 1” in court documents. CNN has independently confirmed that “Company 1” is Tenet...

SNIPWhile the number of votes swayed by the leaked audio remains uncertain, two things are now abundantly clear: The recordings were fake, created using artificial intelligence; and US officials see the episode in Europe as a frightening harbinger of the sort of interference the United States will likely experience during the 2024 presidential election.“As a nation, we are woefully underprepared,” said V.S. Subrahmanian, a Northwestern University professor who focuses on the intersection of AI and security.Senior national security officials in the US have been gearing up for “deepfakes” to inject confusion among voters in a way not previously seen, a...

The vulnerability is in Java-based software known as "Log4j" that large organizations, including some of the world's biggest tech firms, use to configure their applications. Apple's cloud computing service, security firm Cloudflare and one of the world's most popular video games, Minecraft, are among the organizations that run Log4j, according to security researchers. The vulnerability can offer a hacker a relatively easy way to access an organization's computer server. From there, an attacker could devise other ways to access systems on an organization's network. Security experts say that the fallout from the software flaw could continue for days and weeks...