Silicon Valley Company Tracks Threat of Foreign Election Interference

One of the hotly debated topics of Thursday’s presidential debate had to do with Iran and Russia, after the FBI said that foreign operatives used stolen voter registration data to intimidate Democratic voters.

Federal officials said the foreign operatives sent emails filled with disinformation to try to confuse and scare voters while posing as far-right extremists threatening to hurt Democratic voters if they didn’t vote for President Trump.

In Silicon Valley, cyber security company Proofpoint is already tracking the threat, which it calls an attempt to sway your vote with disinformation.

“The threat actors will use anything in the news, anything that’s top of mind, to get into the mindset of people and leverage social engineering to get them to take some kind of action,” said Sherrod Degrippo, senior director of threat research at Proofpoint.

This is similar to what was seen leading up to the 2016 election, but this time targeting email as opposed to social media – at least for now.

“We will continue to see operations like this coming from foreign governments,” Degrippo said.

Whether it comes via email or social media, the advice from the experts is pretty much the same: don’t trust people or news sources that you don’t know. Do your own research, then vote.