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ATHENS, Greece — Disruptive digital attacks, many linked to Russian-backed groups, have doubled in the European Union in recent months and are also targeting election-related services, according to the EU’s top cybersecurity official.

Juhan Lepassaar, head of the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, or ENISA, told The Associated Press in an interview that attacks with geopolitical motives have steadily risen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

“The number of hacktivist attacks (against) European infrastructure — threat actors whose main aim is to cause disruption — has doubled from the fourth quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024,” Lepassaar said late Tuesday at the agency’s headquarters in Athens.

“It’s quite a significant increase,” he said.

Citizens from the EU’s 27 member states will vote June 6-9 for lawmakers in the European Parliament in an election that will also shape the EU’s executive branch, the European Commission. On Wednesday, Belgian officials said police carried out searches at the residence of an employee of the European Parliament and at his office in the Parliament’s building in Brussels over suspected Russian interference. Elections, also due in the United States, Britain and multiple other countries, have alerted security agencies to the threat of disruption campaigns funded by adversaries.

ENISA has led exercises and intense consultations to harden the resilience of election-related agencies in the EU for the past seven months. In an annual report for 2023, the agency noted a surge in ransomware attacks and incidents targeting public institutions.

Lepassaar said that attack methods — while not always successful — were often tried out in Ukraine before being expanded to EU countries.

“This is part of the Russian war of aggression, which they fight physically in Ukraine, but digitally also across Europe,” he said.

Experts warn that artificial intelligence tools are also being used to target Western voters at accelerating speed and scale with misleading or false information, including hyperrealistic video and audio clips known as deepfakes.

“It’s been emphasized, also by member states’ cybersecurity agencies, that AI-enabled disinformation and information manipulation is a big threat,” Lepassaar said.

His comments echo a warning made this month by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that technological progress will make more nations and groups able to launch effective disinformation campaigns.

U.S. and European experts are helping security agencies to try and anticipate emerging digital threats and vulnerabilities over this decade, with ENISA identifying food production, satellite management and self-driving vehicles as areas requiring attention.

Cybersecurity, Lepassaar argues, will inevitably need to become second nature to designers and consumers.

“I do believe that we have a societal challenge ahead of us to understand digital security in the same way that we understand, security in the everyday traffic environment,” he said.

“When we are driving, we are aware of what is going on around us. We are alert,” he said. “The same kind of behaviors and habits are what we need to also instill when we operate in any kind of a digital environment.”

___ Follow the AP’s election-related news at: https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections

US authorities personal save the blame on Iran for the most up-to-date hacking of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

On Monday, the Contrivance of business of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence (ODNI), the FBI, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) revealed a joint assertion and repeated their previous warnings that Iran is making an try to meddle with US elections and rattle folks’s faith in the nation’s leaders.

‘Iran perceives this yr’s elections to be significantly consequential by come of the impact they can personal on its national security pursuits’ – Joint Commentary

Though there personal been reviews about Iran and Russia making an try to derail the elections this yr, that is the predominant time that the authorities personal blamed Iran for a particular attack which is what makes this even more famous.

Additionally, other than Donald Trump’s campaign, Iran moreover allegedly tried to hack Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign nonetheless was as soon as unsuccessful.

The news comes exact about a days after Microsoft released a list announcing that they’ve noticed increased interference from Iranian groups in the upcoming elections.

Though Iran’s intrusion has been a phase of the closing three US election cycles, Microsoft says that the intensive try to meddle in the closing 6 months is one thing they haven’t considered earlier than.

OpenAI moreover took down accounts of Storm-2035, an Iranian community that was as soon as the usage of ChatGPT to generate long-make and instant-make hiss material to lead the US elections and other global issues.

What Does Iran Have to Dispute About This?

Iran’s mission to the United International locations has denied all these allegations. It acknowledged that they haven’t any motive or map to intervene with the elections and if the US is making such accusations, then it needs to relieve them up with evidence. For now, the US doesn’t appear to be in a mood to portion any evidence.

All that we all know is that the attack focused people with speak involvement in the election campaigns.

As an instance, per a list by The Washington Post, Roger Stone, longtime Trump advisor and confidante, is among the victims.

With Iran denying allegations and the US now not offering evidence, there appears to be no instant solution in look. Meanwhile, the whole authorities pleaded to proceed combating these attacks, be it from Iran or Russia.

And till issues assemble relieve to in vogue, officers are advised to stick with the following security practices:

Additionally, for folks facing confidential knowledge, it’s suggested that they most productive use their unswerving electronic mail for unswerving work. It’s a ways moreover the very most attention-grabbing time to assemble the simplest password supervisor and antivirus solution with phishing alerts to forestall unauthorized files breaches and a ways away assemble admission to.