The Wiretap: Watch Out For Russia's Fake Election News

The Wiretap is your weekly digest of cybersecurity, internet privacy and surveillance news. To get it in your inbox, subscribe here .

American intelligence and law enforcement agencies are warning about fake s and videos created by Russians around Tuesday's presidential election, claiming they "risk inciting violence, including against election officials."

A joint statement from the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) suggested the Russian efforts were designed to "undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans." They now expect the disinformation campaigns to intensify through election day and beyond, with their focus on swing states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

One example was the amplification of an claiming that U.S. officials across swing states plan to commit election fraud via ballot stuffing and cyberattacks. In another, Russian agents promoted a video of an individual falsely claiming voter rolls had been altered to favor Vice President Kamala Harris. The Arizona Secretary of State has refuted the video's claim.

"In light of continued influence efforts by foreign adversaries and the increasing volume of inauthentic content online, CISA recommends voters seek out information from trusted, official sources, in particular, state and local election officials," the government advised.

In one of four updates from CISA on election day, the organization said it had not seen any sign of any significant, countrywide cyber incident affecting the election.

"Our election infrastructure has never been more secure," a CISA official said. They said the agency was keeping tabs in Iranian influence operations too, but didn't point to any specifics.

Social media companies will also have to be on guard. As Forbes' Emily Baker-White reported last week , Meta's Facebook ran hundreds of ads from pages falsely claiming the election may be rigged or postponed. Meta's ad library showed Mark Zuckerberg's company was paid more than $1 million to run the ads. Subsequently, Meta has chosen to extend its ban on new political ads beyond the election until later this week, though no specific time or date was given. Meanwhile, TikTok is dealing with some internecine battles over how much political content to allow .

Got a tip on surveillance or cybercrime? Get me on Signal at +1 929-512-7964 .

Google's AI Finds A Security Vulnerability

large language model (LLM) was tasked with finding security weaknesses in commonly-used software and managed to find one in open source database engine SQLite. The flaw was fixed within 24 hours of the AI finding it this October.

"We believe this is the first public example of an AI agent finding a previously unknown exploitable memory-safety issue in widely used real-world software," Google wrote in a blog post . "We think that this work has tremendous defensive potential. Finding vulnerabilities in software before it's even released, means that there's no scope for attackers to compete: the vulnerabilities are fixed before attackers even have a chance to use them."

Stories You Have To Read Today

Skyler Philippi, a 24-year old from Tennessee, has been arrested and charged for planning to fly a drone containing explosives into a Nashville energy facility. The DOJ alleged he was motivated to carry out the attack out of an extremist, white supremacist ideology based around Norse mythology.

A former employee has been accused of hacking into the company's restaurant systems to change digital menus, including replacing text with wingding symbols and changing some menu items to claim they were safe for individuals with peanut allergies, which could have proven deadly, according to the DOJ. It was alleged that he carried out the attacks in revenge for being fired.

There's a spyware scandal in Italy, where 44-year-old IT consultant called Nunzio Samuele Calamucci is accused of abusing his access to Interior Ministry systems that his company had been tasked with maintaining. Calamucci is alleged to have pilfered information on a vast number of Italians, including President Sergio Mattarella and former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Calamucci's company, Equalize, was also reportedly working for Israeli intelligence and the Vatican to gather intelligence on Russian targets, according to police wiretaps leaked to Italian media.

Cybersecurity company has revealed how it hid surveillance software in its own tools - specifically those used by Chinese hackers, in an attempt to learn about vulnerabilities they were exploiting in Sophos' own firewalls. Over years of a cat-and-mouse game, as Wired reports, the implants led Sophos to a group of security researchers in Chengdu, China.

Winner of the Week

Startup Gray Swan AI is helping and the United Kingdom's AI Safety Institute to improve the safety of their artificial intelligence models. As detailed in a Forbes profile , the three founders hail from Carnegie Mellon University and one - Zico Kolter - is a chair on OpenAI's safety and security committee. The company claims it can quickly identify issues and provide the tools that remediate and mitigate them in the future.

Loser of the Week

has warned about a bizarre vulnerability in its software: all accounts with usernames of at least 52 characters could be accessed with any password. While few Okta users will have a username of that length, it's possible hackers took advantage of the weakness, which was resident in Okta software from July 23 to October 30.

More On Forbes Short On Cash After 2016 Election, Trump Secured Secret Loan Mori Trust's Miwako Date Looks To Hotels For New Growth