Cybersecurity firm: U.S. Senate in Russian hackers’ crosshairs

PARIS — The same Russian government-aligned hackers who penetrated the Democratic Party have spent the past few months laying the groundwork for an espionage campaign against the U.S. Senate, a cybersecurity firm said in a report Friday.

The revelation suggests the group often nicknamed Fancy Bear, whose hacking campaign scrambled the 2016 U.S. electoral contest, is still busy trying to gather the emails of America’s political elite.

“They’re still very active — in making preparations at least — to influence public opinion again,” said Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher at Trend Micro Inc. who authored the report. “They are looking for information they might leak later.”

The Senate Sergeant at Arms office, which is responsible for the upper house’s security, declined to comment, but Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse said it was time for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to return to Congress to say what action had been taken to help ensure lawmakers’ digital safety. “The Administration needs to take urgent action to ensure that our adversaries cannot undermine the framework of our political debates,” he said in a statement.

Trend Micro based its report on the discovery of a clutch of suspiciouslooking websites dressed up to look like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. The Tokyo-based firm then cross-referenced digital fingerprints associated with those sites to ones used almost exclusively by Fancy Bear, which it dubs “Pawn Storm.”

Trend Micro previously drew international attention when it used an identical technique to uncover a set of decoy websites apparently set up to harvest emails from the French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in April 2017. The sites’ discovery was followed two months later by a stillunexplained publication of private emails from several Macron staffers in the final days of the race.

Hacquebord said the rogue Senate sites — which were set up in June and September of 2017 — matched their French counterparts.

“That is exactly the way they attacked the Macron campaign in France,” he said.

Attribution is extremely tricky in the world of cybersecurity, where hackers routinely use misdirection and red herrings to fool their adversaries. But Tend Micro, which has followed Fancy Bear for years, said there could be no doubt.

“We are 100 percent sure that it can be attributed to the Pawn Storm group,” said Rik Ferguson, one of the Hacquebord’s colleagues.

Like many cybersecurity companies, Trend Micro refuses to speculate publicly on who is behind such groups, referring to Pawn Storm only as having “Russia-related interests.” But the U.S. intelligence community alleges that Russia’s military intelligence service pulls the hackers’ strings.

MONTECITO, Calif. — Most residents of mudslideravaged Montecito were under orders to clear out Friday as the search for victims dragged on and crews labored to clean up massive debris and repair power, water and gas lines.

Even those who didn’t lose their homes in the disaster that left at least 18 people dead were told to leave for up to two weeks so they wouldn’t interfere with the rescue and recovery operation.

It was another frustrating turn for those living in the Southern California town that has been subject to repeated evacuation orders in recent weeks, first because of a monster wildfire last month, then because of downpours and mudslides.

Cia Monroe said her family was lucky their home wasn’t ruined and they were all healthy and safe, though her daughter lost one of her best friends.

But Monroe said it was stressful after evacuating three times during the wildfire to be packing up a fourth time. A family had offered them a room to stay overnight, but then they were looking at spending up to $3,000 a week for a hotel.

Florida man wins $451 million Mega Millions jackpot

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A 20-year-old Florida man claimed the $451 million Mega Millions jackpot on Friday, choosing to get $282 million at once instead of more in annual installments.

A Florida Lottery news release said Friday that 20-year-old Shane Missler, of Port Richey, had claimed the jackpot from the multistate game’s Jan. 5 drawing. They say he chose to receive his winnings in a onetime, lump-sum payment of $281,874,999.

“I’m only 20, but I hope to use it to pursue a variety of passions, help my family and do some good for humanity,” he said in a statement.

The winning numbers to claim the nation’s 10th-largest jackpot were 28-30-39-5970 with a Mega Ball of 10.

Man convicted of killing 3 civil rights workers dies in jail

JACKSON, Miss. — Edgar Ray Killen, a 1960s Ku Klux Klan leader who was convicted decades later in the “Mississippi Burning” slayings of three civil rights workers, has died in prison at the age of 92, the state’s corrections department announced.

Killen was serving three consecutive 20-year terms for manslaughter when he died at 9 p.m. Thursday inside the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. An autopsy was pending, but no foul play was suspected, the statement Friday said.

His conviction came 41 years to the day after James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, all in their 20s, were ambushed and killed by Klansmen.

The three Freedom Summer workers had been investigating