As cyber connectivity increases, foreign actors have been able to exploit vulnerabilities on smartphones, computers, and the digital infrastructure that supports them to undermine democracies. Probing and penetrating computer networks and connected systems allows malign actors to surreptitiously steal, alter, and collect data, damaging citizens’ privacy and disrupting organizational and institutional processes in democracies. Find ASD’s work on cybersecurity on this page.
Interference Matters
Answering the Call: Improving Local Police Response to Ransomware
Meta Report Highlights Lack of Cross-Platform Coordination on Information Operations
Meta’s recent report on the company’s takedown of a Chinese government information campaign that was the “largest cross-platform operation” ever, and of several smaller influence campaigns that originated in Turkey, Iran, and Russia, named hundreds [...]
Lindsay Gorman Breaks Down the Cybersecurity Concerns of American Airlines and Uber Data Breaches on CBS News
Recent data breaches at American Airlines and Uber have raised concerns that consumer data is increasingly vulnerable to hacking attempts. Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow for emerging technologies at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, discussed wh [...]
Lindsay Gorman Discusses the Missing Text Messages from Jan. 6 on CBS News
We are learning about more text messages that went missing from government phones after the January 6 Capitol riot. Lindsay Gorman, senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, joined CBS News' Lana Zak to discuss. [...]
David Levine in The Fulcrum: US Elections Require a Permanent Structure for Fighting Foreign Interference
The National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command recently reestablished their election security team to help secure the 2022 midterm elections. In light of Independent Sen. Angus King’s push for Cybercom to produce unclassified reports connected [...]
Neither Gone Nor Forgotten: China Still Interferes in Democracies
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized the Euro-Atlantic community’s motivation to assess and counter Moscow’s interference in their democracies. The Kremlin’s financing of French far-right politician Marine Le Pen was a central issue in France [...]
Who Cares about a Midterm Election? Comparing Russia, Iran, and China’s Electoral Interference from Past to Present
The 2020 presidential election cycle was abnormally long, with chaos, debate about the outcome, and an insurrection before it finally concluded—at least officially—on inauguration day in January 2021. Now just over a year later, the United States mu [...]
What to Expect from Russia Should Finland and Sweden Join NATO
Finland and Sweden are applying for NATO membership, with both countries drawing a direct link between the Russian military’s unconscionable war against neighboring Ukraine and the need for the formal security guarantees the NATO alliance provides. [...]
Lindsay Gorman Breaks Down the Russian Cyber Threat on CBS News
As the war in Ukraine drags on, concerns are now growing about potential cyberattacks from Russia in the U.S. Lindsay Gorman, an emerging technologies fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, joins CBS News' Jamie Yuccas to discuss America's c [...]
Answering the Call: Improving Local Police Response to Ransomware
Towards the end of 2021—a year when ransomware attacks reached record highs—researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy investigated how local police are responding to the threat of ransomware. We sought to understand how cases are reported a [...]
How Government Agencies Can Signal Trust Online Using .Gov Domain Names
The name of a website is the key indicator users, operators, and algorithms use to evaluate the authenticity of the owner of that website. So much so that there are frequent, sophisticated attempts to trick users into going to fake websites to steal [...]
What to Watch: ASD Experts Set the Stage for Biden’s Summit for Democracy
On December 9 and 10, U.S. President Joseph R. Biden will bring together leaders from 110 countries and governments for a virtual Summit for Democracy based around three key themes: defending against authoritarianism; addressing and fighting corrupt [...]
Politically Motivated Ransomware Attacks: Science Fiction or Reality?
Cybersecurity experts have watched closely as two trends in cyber interference have steadily grown in popularity: ransomware and hacktivism. Up to this point, they have remained relatively separate. That is, hacktivists have used technology for encr [...]