Page 36 - Cyber Warnings

How Cyber Criminals Can Steal The Election

There has never been anything quite like the 2016 presidential election. More than any other
election in history, the campaign has been waged online, via Twitter and other forms of social
media. And the electorate has never been more online, too.

Today, with more than 60% of U.S. adults getting accessing news via social media, this election
is far more susceptible to social media monkey business than ever before

In 2016 alone there have been numerous examples of online “dirty tricks,” online activity by
fraudsters and activists that spread messages designed to confuse or mislead the electorate.

These malevolent activities can be generally grouped into the three categories

 Criminals or activists using online schemes to leverage the election for personal profit
 Political operatives taking advantage of social media to distort information or distribute
unfavorable information
 Online actions designed to decrease public trust in the election’s process or eventual
validity

How do the personal profit schemes work? They work the same way a scheme targeted at a
trusted corporation or institution – though impersonations, rogue emails, fake social domains,
and duplicitous websites.

The election of 2016 has seen numerous online impersonations of both candidates. During a
BrandProtect study of Election Social Fraud, we discovered hundreds of domains impersonating
candidates, and a similar number of twitter handles.

The Trump campaign is most frequently targeted by fraudsters. We counted almost one
hundred copycat Twitter handles, each with a small number of direct followers, but all of them
active.

Many of these fake accounts tweeted out a mix of official campaign communications,
interspersed with links to porn sites and malware/ransomware. Though these fake accounts
may not have a lot of followers, their most outlandish posts have the potential to go viral, or
even semi-viral, leaving behind a trail of compromised readers.

The prize for most creative rogue online activity goes to Ian Hawes -- the man behind the
infamous dinnerwithtrump.org, a website that looked like a legitimate Trump campaign website,
complete with America flags and iconic photographs of the Republican presidential candidate.

36 Cyber Warnings E-Magazine – September 2016 Edition
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