Donald Trump – Page 9

Trump’s 60% tariffs could push China to hobble tech industry growth

china tariffs, consumer technology, Donald Trump, Policy, us-china trade war / 9u50fv / November 6, 2024

Retaliation likely, experts say

Tech industry urges more diplomacy as it faces Trump’s proposed sweeping tariffs.

Now that the US presidential election has been called for Donald Trump, the sweeping tariffs regime that Trump promised on the campaign trail seems imminent. For the tech industry, already burdened by the impact of tariffs on their supply chains, it has likely become a matter of “when” not “if” companies will start spiking prices on popular tech.

During Trump’s last administration, he sparked a trade war with China by imposing a wide range of tariffs on China imports, and President Joe Biden has upheld and expanded them during his term. These tariffs are taxes that Americans pay on restricted Chinese goods, imposed by both presidents as a tactic to punish China for unfair trade practices, including technology theft, by hobbling US business with China.

As the tariffs expanded, China has often retaliated, imposing tariffs on US goods and increasingly limiting US access to rare earth materials critical to manufacturing a wide range of popular products. And any such retaliation from China only seems to spark threats of more tariffs in the US—setting off a cycle that seems unlikely to end with Trump imposing a proposed 60 percent tax on all China imports. Experts told Ars that the tech industry expects to be stuck in the middle of the blow-by-blow trade war, taking punches left and right.

Currently, there are more than $300 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports, but notably, there are none yet on popular tech like smartphones, laptops, tablets, and game consoles. Back when Trump last held office, the tech industry successfully lobbied to get those exemptions, warning that the US economy would hugely suffer if tariffs were imposed on consumer tech. Prices on game consoles alone could spike by as much as 25 percent as tech companies coped with increasing costs from tariffs, the industry warned, since fully decoupling from China was then, and is still now, considered impossible.

Trump’s proposed 60 percent tariff would cost tech companies four times more than that previous round of tariffs that the industry dodged when Trump last held office. A recent Consumer Technology Association (CTA) study found that prices could jump even higher than previously feared if consumer tech is as heavily taxed as Trump intends. Laptop prices could nearly double, game console prices could rise by 40 percent, and smartphone prices by 26 percent.

Any drastic spike in pricing could radically reshape markets for popular tech products at a time when tariffs and political tensions increasingly block US business growth into China. Diverting resources to decouple from China could disrupt companies’ abilities to fund more US innovation, risking Americans’ access to the latest tech at affordable prices. Experts told Ars that it’s unclear exactly how China will respond if Trump’s proposed tariffs become a reality, but that retaliation seems likely given the severity and broad scope of the looming tariffs regime. While some experts speculate that China may currently have fewer options to retaliate, according to CTA VP of International Trade Ed Brzytwa, “in terms of economic tools, there’s a lot of things that China could still do.”

How would China respond to Trump’s tariffs?

Nearly everyone—tech companies, lawmakers, and even US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen—agrees that it would be impossible to fully decouple from China, where 30 percent of global manufacturing occurs. It will take substantial time and investment to shift supply chains that were built over decades of tech progress.

For tech companies, alienating China also comes with the additional risk of stifling growth into China markets, as China seemingly runs out of obvious ways to retaliate against the US without directly targeting US businesses.

After Trump’s early round of tariffs started a US-China trade war, China retaliated with more tariffs, and nothing the Biden administration has done has seemingly eased those tensions.

According to a November report from the nonpartisan nonprofit US-China Business Council, any “escalation of US tariffs would likely trigger retaliatory measures from China,” which could include increasing tariffs on US exports.

That could hurt tech companies even more than current tariffs already are, while spiking net job losses to more than 800,000 by 2025, the council warned, making “US businesses less competitive in the Chinese market” and “resulting in a permanent loss of revenue.” In another report from 2021, the council estimated that if the US intensifies the trade war while forcing a decoupling with China, it could ultimately decrease the US real gross domestic product by $1.6 trillion over the next five years.

The US-China Business Council declined to comment on how Trump’s proposed tariffs could impact the GDP.

In May, following Biden’s latest round of tariffs—on imports like electric vehicles, semiconductors, battery components, and critical minerals used in tech manufacturing—China immediately threatened retaliation. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, confirmed that “China opposes the unilateral imposition of tariffs which violate World Trade Organization [WTO] rules and will take all necessary actions to protect its legitimate rights,” CNN reported.

Nobody is sure how China may retaliate if Trump’s sweeping tariff regime is implemented. Peterson Institute for International Economics senior fellow Mary Lovely said that China’s response to Biden’s 100 percent tariff on EVs was surprisingly “muted,” but if a 60 percent tariff were imposed on all China goods, the country “would likely retaliate.”

Tech industry strategist and founder of Tirias Research Jim McGregor told Ars that China has already “threatened to start cutting back on access to rare earth materials,” potentially limiting US access to critical components of semiconductors. Brzytwa told Ars that “the processed materials that result from those rare earths are important for manufacturing of a variety of products in the United States or elsewhere.”

China “might be running out of room to retaliate with tariffs,” Brzytwa suggested, but the country could also place more restrictions on US exports or heighten the scrutiny of US companies, possibly even limiting investments. McGregor pointed out that China could also block US access to Taiwan or stop shipments into and out of Taiwan.

“They’ve already encircled the island recently with military weaponry, so they didn’t even have to invade Taiwan,” McGregor said. “They can actually block aid to Taiwan, and with the vast majority of our semiconductors still produced there, that would have a huge impact on our industry and our economy.”

Brzytwa is worried that if China is pushed too far in a trade war, it may lash out in other ways.

“I think what we worry about as well is that whatever actions the United States undertakes become so provocative that China decides to act out outside the economic arena through other means,” Brzytwa told Ars.

What should the US be doing?

If the US wants to succeed in safeguarding US national security and tech innovation, Lovely told Congress the country must clarify “its strategic intent with respect to trade with China” and reform tariffs to align with that strategic intent.

She said that Trump’s “whole kitchen sink” approach has not worked, and rather than being strategic, Biden has been capricious in upholding and expanding on Trump’s tariffs.

“If you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing well,” Lovely told Ars. “Rather than just vilifying China (which, granted, China deserves a lot of vilification)” and “deluding” Americans into thinking tariffs are good for them, Lovely suggested, Trump should analyze “what’s the best thing for the United States?”

Instead, when Lovely shared a report in August with the Trump campaign—estimating that it would cost “a typical US household in the middle of the income distribution more than $2,600 a year” if Trump follows through on his tariff plans, which also include a 20 percent universal tariff on all imports from anywhere—Trump’s team rejected input “from so-called experts,” Lovely said.

Lovely thinks the US should commit to a long-term solution to reduce reliance on China that can be sustained through each presidential administration. That could mean working to support decarbonization efforts and raise labor standards in allied nations where manufacturing could potentially be diverted, essentially committing to build a new global value chain after the past 35 years of China’s manufacturing dominance.

“The vast majority of the world’s electronic assembly is done in China,” McGregor told Ars. And while “a lot of companies are trying to have slowly migrated some of their manufacturing out of China and trying to build new facilities, that takes decades to really shift.”

Even if the US managed to block all imports from China in a decade, Lovely suggested that “we would still have a lot of imports from China because Chinese value added is going to be embedded in things we import from Vietnam and Thailand and Indonesia and Mexico.”

“The tariff can be effective in changing these direct imports, as we’ve seen, yeah, but they’re not going to really push China out of the global economy,” Lovely told Ars.

Consequences of a lack of diplomacy

All experts agreed that more diplomacy is needed since decoupling is impossible, especially in the tech industry, where isolating China has threatened to diverge standards and restrict growth into China markets that could spur US innovation.

“We need somebody desperately that’s going to try to bridge barriers, not create them,” McGregor told Ars. “Unfortunately, we have nobody in Washington that appears to want to do that.”

Choosing diplomacy over tariffs could also mean striking trade agreements to curtail China’s unfair trade practices that the US opposes, such as a deal holding China accountable to WTO commitments, Brzytwa told Ars.

But even though China’s spokesperson cited the WTO commitments in his statement opposing US tariffs last May, Brzytwa said, the US has seemingly given up on the WTO dispute settlement process, feeling that it doesn’t work because “China doesn’t fit the WTO.”

“It’s a lot of defeatism, in my view,” Brzytwa said.

Consumers will pay the costs

Brzytwa warned that if Trump deepens US-China trade tensions, it would likely cause ripple effects across the US, potentially constricting access to the best tech available today, which would result in limited productivity across industry.

Any costs of new tariffs “would be passed on to consumers, and consumers would purchase less of those products,” Brzytwa said. “In our view, that is not supportive of innovation when people are not purchasing the latest technologies that might be more capable, more energy-efficient, and might have new features in them that allow us to be more productive.”

Brzytwa said that a CTA study showed that if tariffs are imposed across the economy, all companies would have to stop everything to move away from China and into the US. That would take at least a decade, 10 times the labor force the US has now, and cost $500 billion in direct business investments, the study estimated. “And that’s before you get to environmental costs or energy costs,” Brzytwa told Ars, while noting that an alternative strategy relying on treaty allies and trading partners could cut those costs to $127 billion but not eliminate them.

“It wouldn’t happen in a way where there’s no cost increase,” Brzytwa said. “Of course, there’s going to be a cost increase.”

The hardest-hit tech companies by China tariffs so far have likely been small businesses with little chance to grow since they’re “paying more in tariff costs or they’re paying more in administrative costs, and they’re not spending money on research and development, or they’re not hiring new people, because they’re just trying to stay alive,” Brzytwa said.

Lovely has testified three times to Congress and plans to continue stressing what the negative impacts “might be for American manufacturers for consumers” from what she thinks are “rather extreme moves” expanding tariffs without clear purpose under both Trump and Biden.

But while Congress controls the power to tax, it’s the executive branch that controls foreign policy, and in this highly politicized environment, even well-researched studies done by nonpartisan civil servants can’t be depended on to influence presidents who are determined to use tariffs to appear strong against China, Lovely suggested.

On the campaign trail, both candidates appeared to be misleading Americans into thinking that tariffs “are good for them,” Lovely said. If Trump’s tariffs get implemented once he’s sworn back in, that will only make it that much worse if the rug gets yanked from under them and Americans are suddenly hit with higher prices on their favorite devices.

“It’s going to be like shock therapy, and it’s not going to be pleasant,” Lovely told Ars.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Trump’s 60% tariffs could push China to hobble tech industry growth Read More »

Elon Musk’s X loses battle over federal request for Trump’s DMs

Donald Trump, elon musk, government data requests, January 6, Policy, presidential record act, Stored Communications Act, Twitter, X, x corp / 9u50fv / October 7, 2024

Prosecutors now have a “blueprint” to seize privileged communications, X warned.

Last year, special counsel Jack Smith asked X (formerly Twitter) to hand over Donald Trump’s direct messages from his presidency without telling Trump. Refusing to comply, X spent the past year arguing that the gag order was an unconstitutional prior restraint on X’s speech and an “end-run” around a record law shielding privileged presidential communications.

Under its so-called free speech absolutist owner Elon Musk, X took this fight all the way to the Supreme Court, only for the nation’s highest court to decline to review X’s appeal on Monday.

It’s unclear exactly why SCOTUS rejected X’s appeal, but in a court filing opposing SCOTUS review, Smith told the court that X’s “contentions lack merit and warrant no further review.” And SCOTUS seemingly agreed.

The government had argued that its nondisclosure order was narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest in stopping Trump from either deleting his DMs or intimidating witnesses engaged in his DMs while he was in office.

At that time, Smith was publicly probing the interference with a peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 presidential election, and courts had agreed that “there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant” to Trump “‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,” Smith’s court filing said.

Under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the government can request data and apply for a nondisclosure order gagging any communications provider from tipping off an account holder about search warrants for limited periods deemed appropriate by a court, Smith noted. X was only prohibited from alerting Trump to the search warrant for 180 days, Smith said, and only restricted from discussing the existence of the warrant.

As the government sees it, this reliance on the SCA “does not give unbounded, standardless discretion to government officials or otherwise create a risk of ‘freewheeling censorship,'” like X claims. But the government warned that affirming X’s appeal “would mean that no SCA warrant could be enforced without disclosure to a potential privilege holder, regardless of the dangers to the integrity of the investigation.”

Court finds X alternative to gag order “unpalatable”

X tried to wave a red flag in its SCOTUS petition, warning the court that this was “the first time in American history” that a court “ordered disclosure of presidential communications without notice to the President and without any adjudication of executive privilege.”

The social media company argued that it receives “tens of thousands” of government data requests annually—including “thousands” with nondisclosure orders—and pushes back on any request for privileged information that does not allow users to assert their privileges. Allowing the lower court rulings to stand, X warned SCOTUS, could create a path for government to illegally seize information not just protected by executive privilege, but also by attorney-client, doctor-patient, or journalist-source privileges.

X’s “policy is to notify users about law enforcement requests ‘prior to disclosure of account information’ unless legally ‘prohibited from doing so,'” X argued.

X suggested that rather than seize Trump’s DMs without giving him a chance to assert his executive privilege, the government should have designated a representative capable of weighing and asserting whether some of the data requested was privileged. That’s how the Presidential Records Act (PRA) works, X noted, suggesting that Smith’s team was improperly trying to avoid PRA compliance by invoking SCA instead.

But the US government didn’t have to prove that the less-restrictive alternative X submitted would have compromised its investigation, X said, because the court categorically rejected X’s submission as “unworkable” and “unpalatable.”

According to the court, designating a representative placed a strain on the government to deduce if the representative could be trusted not to disclose the search warrant. But X pointed out that the government had no explanation for why a PRA-designated representative, Steven Engel—a former assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel who “publicly testified about resisting the former President’s conduct”—”could not be trusted to follow a court order forbidding him from further disclosure.”

“Going forward, the government will never have to prove it could avoid seriously jeopardizing its investigation by disclosing a warrant to only a trusted representative—a common alternative to nondisclosure orders,” X argued.

In a brief supporting X, attorneys for the nonprofit digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote that the court was “unduly dismissive of the arguments” X raised and “failed to apply exacting scrutiny, relieving the government of its burden to actually demonstrate, with evidence, that these alternatives would be ineffective.”

Further, X argued that none of the government’s arguments for nondisclosure made sense. Not only was Smith’s investigation announced publicly—allowing Trump ample time to delete his DMs already—but also “there was no risk of destruction of the requested records because Twitter had preserved them.” On top of that, during the court battle, the government eventually admitted that one rationale for the nondisclosure order—that Trump posed a supposed “flight risk” if the search warrant was known—”was implausible because the former President already had announced his re-election run.”

X unsuccessfully pushed SCOTUS to take on the Trump case as an “ideal” and rare opportunity to publicly decide when nondisclosure orders cross the line when seeking to seize potentially privileged information on social media.

In its petition for SCOTUS review, X pointed out that every social media or communications platform is bombarded with government data requests that only the platforms can challenge. That leaves it up to platforms to figure out when data requests are problematic, which they frequently are, as “the government often agrees to modify or vacate them in informal negotiations,” X argued.

But when the government refuses to negotiate, as in the Trump case, platforms have to decide if litigation is worth it, risking sanctions if the court finds the platform in contempt, just as X was sanctioned $350,000 in the Trump case. If a less restrictive alternative was determined appropriate by the courts, such as appointing a trusted representative, platforms would never have had to guess when data requests threaten to expose their users’ privileged information, X argued.

According to X, another case like this won’t come around for decades, where court filings wouldn’t have to be redacted and a ruling wouldn’t have to happen behind closed doors.

But the government seemingly persuaded the Supreme Court to decline to review the case, partly by arguing that X’s challenge to its nondisclosure order was moot. Responding to X’s objections, the government had eventually agreed to modify the nondisclosure order to disclose the warrant to Trump, so long as the name of the case agent assigned to the investigation was redacted. So X’s appeal is really over nothing, the government suggested.

Additionally, the government argued that “this case would not be an appropriate vehicle” for SCOTUS’ review of the question X raised because “no executive privilege issue actually existed in this case.”

“If review of the underlying legal issues were ever warranted, the Court should await a live case in which the issues are concretely presented,” Smith’s court filing said.

X is likely deflated by SCOTUS’ call declining to review X’s appeal. In its petition, X claimed that the court system risked providing “a blueprint for prosecutors who wish to obtain potentially privileged materials” and “this end-run will not be limited to federal prosecutors,” X warned. State prosecutors will likely also be emboldened to do the same now that the precedent has been set, X predicted.

In their brief supporting X, EFF lawyers noted that the government already has “far too much authority to shield its activities from public scrutiny.” By failing to prevent nondisclosure orders from restraining speech, the court system risks making it harder to “meaningfully test these gag orders in court,” EFF warned.

“Even a meritless gag order that is ultimately voided by a court causes great harm while it is in effect,” EFF’s lawyers said, while disclosure “ensures that individuals whose information is searched have an opportunity to defend their privacy from unwarranted and unlawful government intrusions.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

Elon Musk’s X loses battle over federal request for Trump’s DMs Read More »

Due to AI fakes, the “deep doubt” era is here

AI, Biz & IT, Danielle K. Citron, deep doubt, Deepfakes, Donald Trump, doubt, facebook, history, image synthesis, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Liar's Dividend, machine learning, media literacy, music synthesis, Politics, Robert Chesney, Social Media, text synthesis, video synthesis, voice synthesis, X / Kelly Newman / September 19, 2024

A person writing — Memento | Aurich Lawson

Given the flood of photorealistic AI-generated images washing over social media networks like X and Facebook these days, we’re seemingly entering a new age of media skepticism: the era of what I’m calling “deep doubt.” While questioning the authenticity of digital content stretches back decades—and analog media long before that—easy access to tools that generate convincing fake content has led to a new wave of liars using AI-generated scenes to deny real documentary evidence. Along the way, people’s existing skepticism toward online content from strangers may be reaching new heights.

Deep doubt is skepticism of real media that stems from the existence of generative AI. This manifests as broad public skepticism toward the veracity of media artifacts, which in turn leads to a notable consequence: People can now more credibly claim that real events did not happen and suggest that documentary evidence was fabricated using AI tools.

The concept behind “deep doubt” isn’t new, but its real-world impact is becoming increasingly apparent. Since the term “deepfake” first surfaced in 2017, we’ve seen a rapid evolution in AI-generated media capabilities. This has led to recent examples of deep doubt in action, such as conspiracy theorists claiming that President Joe Biden has been replaced by an AI-powered hologram and former President Donald Trump’s baseless accusation in August that Vice President Kamala Harris used AI to fake crowd sizes at her rallies. And on Friday, Trump cried “AI” again at a photo of him with E. Jean Carroll, a writer who successfully sued him for sexual assault, that contradicts his claim of never having met her.

Legal scholars Danielle K. Citron and Robert Chesney foresaw this trend years ago, coining the term “liar’s dividend” in 2019 to describe the consequence of deep doubt: deepfakes being weaponized by liars to discredit authentic evidence. But whereas deep doubt was once a hypothetical academic concept, it is now our reality.

The rise of deepfakes, the persistence of doubt

Doubt has been a political weapon since ancient times. This modern AI-fueled manifestation is just the latest evolution of a tactic where the seeds of uncertainty are sown to manipulate public opinion, undermine opponents, and hide the truth. AI is the newest refuge of liars.

Over the past decade, the rise of deep-learning technology has made it increasingly easy for people to craft false or modified pictures, audio, text, or video that appear to be non-synthesized organic media. Deepfakes were named after a Reddit user going by the name “deepfakes,” who shared AI-faked pornography on the service, swapping out the face of a performer with the face of someone else who wasn’t part of the original recording.

In the 20th century, one could argue that a certain part of our trust in media produced by others was a result of how expensive and time-consuming it was, and the skill it required, to produce documentary images and films. Even texts required a great deal of time and skill. As the deep doubt phenomenon grows, it will erode this 20th-century media sensibility. But it will also affect our political discourse, legal systems, and even our shared understanding of historical events that rely on that media to function—we rely on others to get information about the world. From photorealistic images to pitch-perfect voice clones, our perception of what we consider “truth” in media will need recalibration.

In April, a panel of federal judges highlighted the potential for AI-generated deepfakes to not only introduce fake evidence but also cast doubt on genuine evidence in court trials. The concern emerged during a meeting of the US Judicial Conference’s Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules, where the judges discussed the challenges of authenticating digital evidence in an era of increasingly sophisticated AI technology. Ultimately, the judges decided to postpone making any AI-related rule changes, but their meeting shows that the subject is already being considered by American judges.

Due to AI fakes, the “deep doubt” era is here Read More »

Taylor Swift cites AI deepfakes in endorsement for Kamala Harris

AI, AI fakes, AI-generated images, Biz & IT, childless cat lady, Deepfakes, Donald Trump, elon musk, image synthesis, machine learning, taylor swift / Shannon Garcia / September 11, 2024

it’s raining creepy men —

Taylor Swift on AI: “The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

Benj Edwards – Sep 11, 2024 7: 56 pm UTC

A screenshot of Taylor Swift's Kamala Harris Instagram post, captured on September 11, 2024. — Enlarge / A screenshot of Taylor Swift’s Kamala Harris Instagram post, captured on September 11, 2024.

On Tuesday night, Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for US President on Instagram, citing concerns over AI-generated deepfakes as a key motivator. The artist’s warning aligns with current trends in technology, especially in an era where AI synthesis models can easily create convincing fake images and videos.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” she wrote in her Instagram post. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”

In August 2024, former President Donald Trump posted AI-generated images on Truth Social falsely suggesting Swift endorsed him, including a manipulated photo depicting Swift as Uncle Sam with text promoting Trump. The incident sparked Swift’s fears about the spread of misinformation through AI.

This isn’t the first time Swift and generative AI have appeared together in the news. In February, we reported that a flood of explicit AI-generated images of Swift originated from a 4chan message board where users took part in daily challenges to bypass AI image generator filters.

Listing image by Ronald Woan/CC BY-SA 2.0

Taylor Swift cites AI deepfakes in endorsement for Kamala Harris Read More »

Google’s threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns

APT42, Biz & IT, Donald Trump, Gmail, Google, google tag, Iran, Kamala Harris, phishing, President Biden, Roger Stone, Security, spearphishing, threat analysis group / Kelly Newman / August 15, 2024

It is only August —

Another Big Tech firm seems to confirm Trump adviser Roger Stone was hacked.

Kevin Purdy – Aug 15, 2024 6: 26 pm UTC

Roger Stone, former adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, center, during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee on July 17, 2024. — Enlarge / Roger Stone, former adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, center, during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee on July 17, 2024.

Getty Images

Google’s Threat Analysis Group confirmed Wednesday that they observed a threat actor backed by the Iranian government targeting Google accounts associated with US presidential campaigns, in addition to stepped-up attacks on Israeli targets.

APT42, associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “consistently targets high-profile users in Israel and the US,” the Threat Analysis Group (TAG) writes. The Iranian group uses hosted malware, phishing pages, malicious redirects, and other tactics to gain access to Google, Dropbox, OneDrive, and other cloud-based accounts. Google’s TAG writes that it reset accounts, sent warnings to users, and blacklisted domains associated with APT42’s phishing attempts.

Among APT42’s tools were Google Sites pages that appeared to be a petition from legitimate Jewish activists, calling on Israel to mediate its ongoing conflict with Hamas. The page was fashioned from image files, not HTML, and an ngrok redirect sent users to phishing pages when they moved to sign the petition.

A petition purporting to be from The Jewish Agency for Israel, seeking support for mediation measures—but signatures quietly redirect to phishing sites, according to Google.

Google

In the US, Google’s TAG notes that, as with the 2020 elections, APT42 is actively targeting the personal emails of “roughly a dozen individuals affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump.” TAG confirms that APT42 “successfully gained access to the personal Gmail account of a high-profile political consultant,” which may be longtime Republican operative Roger Stone, as reported by The Guardian, CNN, and The Washington Post, among others. Microsoft separately noted last week that a “former senior advisor” to the Trump campaign had his Microsoft account compromised, which Stone also confirmed.

“Today, TAG continues to observe unsuccessful attempts from APT42 to compromise the personal accounts of individuals affiliated with President Biden, Vice President Harris and former President Trump, including current and former government officials and individuals associated with the campaigns,” Google’s TAG writes.

PDFs and phishing kits target both sides

Google’s post details the ways in which APT42 targets operatives in both parties. The broad strategy is to get the target off their email and into channels like Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp, or possibly a personal email address that may not have two-factor authentication and threat monitoring set up. By establishing trust through sending legitimate PDFs, or luring them to video meetings, APT42 can then push links that use phishing kits with “a seamless flow” to harvest credentials from Google, Hotmail, and Yahoo.

After gaining a foothold, APT42 will often work to preserve its access by generating application-specific passwords inside the account, which typically bypass multifactor tools. Google notes that its Advanced Protection Program, intended for individuals at high risk of attack, disables such measures.

Publications, including Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, have reported being offered documents from the Trump campaign, potentially stemming from Iran’s phishing efforts, in an echo of Russia’s 2016 targeting of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. None of them have moved to publish stories related to the documents.

John Hultquist, with Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant, told Wired’s Andy Greenberg that what looks initially like spying or political interference by Iran can easily escalate to sabotage and that both parties are equal targets. He also said that current thinking about threat vectors may need to expand.

“It’s not just a Russia problem anymore. It’s broader than that,” Hultquist said. “There are multiple teams in play. And we have to keep an eye out for all of them.”

Google’s threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns Read More »