CNN
—
Federal investigators have traced an email address from a Russian internet domain that was used to make numerous discredited bomb threats across swing states on Election Day.
The effort recognizes that although the presidential election is over, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are still dealing with and analyzing a plethora of disinformation and online threats aimed at sowing discord among voters. Emphasized.
For example, in the days before and after Election Day, officials from the FBI and other agencies began to monitor videos and other social media posts allegedly made by Russian operatives, according to people briefed on the matter. He said he spent hours tracking him down. Officials said it was the most aggressive and active U.S. government fight against foreign influence in the social media era.
It is not yet clear who sent the bomb threat and from where. (Russian email addresses can be used outside Russia, and bomb threats are a completely separate activity from social media disinformation). But a surge in emails led to temporary evacuations at some polling stations, adding tension to an already chaotic and threatening environment in the final hours of voting.
The unprecedented high-tempo investigation means that fake content is being created more easily than ever before, spreading rapidly online, and partisans on the right and left are quickly amplifying content to allege voter fraud and suppression. This is in response to the upcoming election.
Officials have previously said Iran and China also conducted online influence operations aimed at the election.
In the 2024 U.S. election cycle, an “unprecedented amount of disinformation,” including falsehoods, was “aggressively disseminated and amplified by foreign adversaries on a larger scale than ever before,” according to the U.S. cybersecurity infrastructure. Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said Monday. Before election day.
Intelligence and law enforcement agencies are working faster than in previous elections to debunk fake videos and images spread on social media platform X, some of which were traced back to Russian operatives. .
“Compared to 2016 and 2020, the fight against foreign interference moved at light speed this year,” said Emerson Brooking, resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Institute. “We saw disclosures coordinated across the U.S. government in days, even hours, and that information quickly corroborated or expanded by independent researchers.”
Otherwise, it was, as some veteran cybersecurity experts like to say, “just another Tuesday on the internet.” Election offices reported scans and unsuccessful attempts by hackers to penetrate their networks, according to a report on widespread threat activity within the election community investigated by CNN. Swatting calls, or hoax calls aimed at provoking a large law enforcement response, were made to schools in Maine, including polling places.
Bomb threats sent by email to polling places and other facilities in battleground states like Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania are a twist in the 2024 election threat environment that officials won’t have to deal with in 2020. Ta. It is unclear whether they influenced the number of votes cast, but they were evidence of new tactics aimed at disrupting the election.
The FBI quickly passed the Russian email address used in the bomb threat to intelligence community analysts. However, there are some unclassified clues about this activity.
One of the email addresses appears to be behind a series of bomb threats at LGBTQ+ events in Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas in June, according to a public records review.
An email address reported by a state as the source of an Election Day bomb threat was used to make a bomb threat during a Pride event in a northeastern Minnesota town in June, according to a statement from the county sheriff. It appears to match the email address used. office.
“My office has drafted a search warrant for the computer where the message was received,” Pat Eliasen, the sheriff of Cook County, Minnesota, told CNN in an email Thursday. “The IP address originated from Russia, and upon contacting the FBI, they confirmed it was a bot.”
However, a Russian IP address does not confirm that the person using your computer is based in Russia. Virtual private network (VPN) services can spoof your location.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the information it provided to Eliasen’s office.
Graphica, a New York-based company that tracks information operations, reviewed evidence provided by CNN and found that Russian email domains were involved in a “widespread disinformation campaign targeting organizations in the United States and abroad since at least 2022. It is likely that some of them are.”
Another expert at cybersecurity firm Sentinel One, who requested anonymity, corroborated Graphica’s findings, saying the email address has been linked to a series of bomb threats in the United States and abroad.
“Graphika’s findings suggest that the fake bomb threat on Election Day in the United States is only part of a larger picture,” said Jack Stubbs, Chief Information Officer at Graphica. told CNN. “This activity appears to be part of a multi-year campaign of false bomb threats that have been sent to schools, universities, and even airports in multiple countries around the world.”
