WASHINGTON \u2014 Encrypted messages. Two-factor authentication. Real-time monitoring of social media for malicious internet bot activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the new reality for candidates running in 2018, scared of email hacks and elaborate misinformation schemes like the ones Russia used to disrupt the 2016 campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And many candidates say they\u2019re concerned they can\u2019t rely on Congress or the White House for advice, or protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSince 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,\u201d said Gareth Rhodes, a Democrat running for an upstate New York House seat. He said he\u2019s put his campaign staff through training on how to identify phishing and hacking attempts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The horror of 2016\u2032s hacked emails is still fresh for most operatives. Democratic lawmakers saw their cellphone numbers splashed online. Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned before the convention. The hacks even prompted a North Carolina man to storm a Washington pizzeria with an assault rifle, based on an internet conspiracy theory that started with the emails of Clinton\u2019s campaign chairman, John Podesta\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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, or NRCC, has hired multiple cybersecurity staffers to work with its candidates and promises to do more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re starting to advise campaigns, but we\u2019re not ready to roll the whole thing out. We\u2019re working on it,\u201d NRCC Chairman Steve Stivers said this week. \u201cWe\u2019re working on the technology-based stuff to try and make sure that we know what\u2019s out there \u2014 which is hard, too \u2014 and then we try to defend against it the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leaders with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the NRCC 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jason Rosenbaum, the former head of digital advertising for Hillary Clinton\u2019s presidential campaign, likened the average congressional campaign to how Rocky Balboa of the \u201980s blockbuster movie \u201cRocky IV\u201d was doing a bare-bones training regime in an isolated cabin in the frozen tundra and clearly was outgunned by Russian prizefighter Ivan Drago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDrago had unlimited state resources, and House campaigns are like Rocky, pushing tree logs in the snow,\u201d said Rosenbaum, who also worked previously in Google\u2019s elections and issues department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Supporters of Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam may offer the best example of what can, and cannot, be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the homestretch of the Virginia governor\u2019s race last year, a Democratic group aired an explosive ad showing a white man in a pickup truck with a waving Confederate flag chasing four black, Hispanic and Muslim kids through a leafy suburban neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It sparked an outcry among conservatives who said it unfairly painted supporters of Republican candidate Ed Gillespie as unrepentant racists. The spot was taken down after two days, and Democrats thought they may have avoided any nasty consequences from the politically insensitive ad. But then a small group of Twitter bots and accounts closely associated with Russia\u2019s Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-connected troll farm, latched on and kept the ad alive through the final week of the race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a matter of hours, an easily missed TV ad quickly punched through the din of the national news and was enshrined as one caustic part of the 2017 governor\u2019s race. Now, with the 2018 vote looming for hundreds of candidates for governor and the House and Senate, it\u2019s a cautionary tale about the perils of a new political landscape filled with bots, trolls and even \u201ccyborgs\u201d \u2014 real people blasting from dozens of social media accounts at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to be able to battle them in the digital sphere, there\u2019s just too many. It\u2019s calling them out for what they are. They\u2019re not voters, they\u2019re not constituents \u2014 they\u2019re just machines,\u201d said David Turner, who worked as Northam\u2019s spokesman during the governor\u2019s race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A social media report commissioned by Virginia\u2019s teachers union pinned much of the blame on 15 Twitter accounts. The report did not specifically state that the accounts were operated by Russia\u2019s troll farm, but the accounts were heavily retweeted and promoted by Russian accounts, according to a database compiled by NBC of tweets purged by Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. intelligence officials have warned that Russian operatives didn\u2019t stop on Election Day 2016. While they offered few details, officials said they expect attacks to continue through the current election season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The social media giants, too, have struggled to come up with answers on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2014 like claims that then President Barack Obama wanted to convert children to Islam. But Twitter didn\u2019t do anything for 11 months, until it discovered the account was linked to Russian meddling in the election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mueller later tagged the account \u201d@TEN_GOP\u201d as one of the most active run by the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201d#TwitterLockout\u201d quickly began trending last week in response to the purge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later the same day, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Republican Devin Nunes, mocked Democrats on Twitter worried about Russian meddling: \u201cCatch up on mainstream media Russian conspiracy theories in this piece by @FDRLST PS-If you are a Russian Bot please make this go viral PSS-If you\u2019re not a Russian Bot you will become one if you retweet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mueller\u2019s 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\u2019t all Democrats \u2014 the indictment said the Russians also tried to spread misinformation about some of Trump\u2019s GOP primary opponents, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Terry Sullivan, Rubio\u2019s campaign manager in 2016, said the campaign noticed misinformation online but didn\u2019t suspect it was from Russians. He\u2019s not managing any campaigns this year, but advises anyone who is slammed by negative content online to create more of their own content that is positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat I learned early on is you can only focus on the things you can control and don\u2019t worry about the rest,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cAnd to a large extent this is beyond any campaign manager\u2019s control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other problem, noted Stivers from the NRCC, is that misinformation is a quintessential part of campaign politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been part of American politics since the presidential campaigns of the 1800s,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Candidates running in 2018 are scared of email hacks and elaborate misinformation schemes like the ones Russia used to disrupt the 2016 campaign, and many candidates say they\u2019re concerned they can\u2019t rely on Congress or the White House for advice, or protection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":31632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":10,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"coauthors":[5481],"class_list":["post-12221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyber"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"O6X67PILMBBAHHOK6TLHTVRFOA","arc_canonical_url":"\/critical-infrastructure\/2018\/03\/01\/russian-election-assault-poses-quandary-for-2018-campaigns\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n