Candidates set up online defenses
They encrypt messages, monitor Web for hacking, schemes
WASHINGTON — Political candidates running in 2018 are doing all they can to prevent email hacks and unwanted misinformation schemes like the ones Russia used to disrupt the 2016 campaign.
Many candidates say they’re concerned that they can’t rely on Congress or the White House for advice — or protection. So their campaign teams are using such technologies as encrypted messages, two-factor authentication and real-time monitoring of social media for malicious Internet bot activity.
“Since many in Washington continue to bury their head in the sand over the dangers our Democracy faces, our campaign has taken deliberate steps to guard against cyberattacks by mandating extensive security measures,” said Gareth Rhodes, a Democrat running for an upstate New York House seat. He said he’s put his campaign staff through training on how to identify phishing and hacking attempts.
The consequences of 2016’s hacked emails are still fresh for most operatives. Democratic lawmakers saw their cellphone numbers splashed online. Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned before the party convention. The hacks even prompted a North Carolina man to storm a Washington pizzeria with an assault-style rifle, based on an Internet conspiracy theory that started with the emails of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Since then, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been hosting cybersecurity briefings for its candidates and staff, pushing campaigns to use encrypted messaging and two-factor authentication. The National Republican Congressional Committee has hired multiple cybersecurity staff members to work with its candidates, and promises to do more.
“We’re starting to advise campaigns, but we’re not ready to roll the whole thing out. We’re working on it,” said Steve Stivers, chairman of the Republican committee. “We’re working on the technology-based stuff to try and make sure that we know what’s out there — which is hard, too — and then we try to defend against it the best we can.”
Leaders with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Republican committee negotiated last year on a coordinated defense against hacks and cyberattacks, but the talks crumbled last summer amid accusations from both sides of grandstanding on the issues, according to Democratic and Republican officials familiar with the effort. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
Jason Rosenbaum, the former head of digital advertising for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, likened the average congressional campaign to how Rocky Balboa of the ’80s blockbuster movie Rocky IV was doing a barebones training regime in an isolated cabin in the frozen tundra and clearly was outgunned by Russian prizefighter Ivan Drago.
“Drago had unlimited state resources, and House campaigns are like Rocky, pushing tree logs in the snow,” said Rosenbaum, who also worked previously in Google’s elections and issues department.
Special counsel Robert Mueller only heightened these concerns when he revealed an intricate misinformation campaign run out of Russia, which used fake identities, set up rallies in America and rushed protesters into the streets on both sides of the divide.
The deeper problem, say cybersecurity experts advising campaigns, is that while hacks and phishing attempts can be blocked, misinformation is more amorphous and harder to curtail.
U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Russian operatives didn’t stop on Election Day 2016. While they offered few details, officials said they expect attacks to continue through the current election season.
The social media giants, too, have struggled to come up with answers on their own.
Through the end of the 2016 election campaign, the Tennessee Republican Party pressed Twitter to take down an impostor account that was tweeting wild accusations — like claims that then President Barack Obama wanted to convert children to Islam. But Twitter didn’t do anything for 11 months, until it discovered the account was linked to Russian meddling in the election.
Mueller later tagged the account “TEN—GOP” as one of the most active run by the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia.
But when Twitter recently purged thousands of accounts it discovered were fake or automated, it spurred a backlash among conservative pundits online who lost thousands of followers. The hashtag “#TwitterLockout” quickly began trending last week in response to the purge.
Later the same day, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Devin Nunes, mocked Democrats on Twitter worried about Russian meddling: “Catch up on mainstream media Russian conspiracy theories in this piece by FDRLST PS-If you are a Russian Bot please make this go viral PSSIf you’re not a Russian Bot you will become one if you retweet.”
Mueller’s indictment of the Russian nationals and companies two weeks ago outlined an effort that was mostly aimed at helping Trump and hurting Clinton. But their targets weren’t all Democrats — the indictment said the Russians also tried to spread misinformation about some of Trump’s GOP primary opponents, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Terry Sullivan, Rubio’s campaign manager in 2016, said the campaign noticed misinformation online but didn’t suspect it was from Russians. He’s not managing any campaigns this year, but he said anyone who is slammed by negative content online should create more of their own content that is positive.
“What I learned early on is you can only focus on the things you can control and don’t worry about the rest,” Sullivan said. “And to a large extent this is beyond any campaign manager’s control.”
The other problem, noted Stivers, is that misinformation is a quintessential part of campaign politics.
“It’s been part of American politics since the presidential campaigns of the 1800s,” he said.