Russian hackers target U.S. Senate

A Tokyo-based cybersecurity firm on Friday said the same Russian hackers who disrupted the 2016 U.S. presidential election spent the past few months preparing to target upcoming U.S. Senate races. The report published by Trend Micro Inc. said the Fancy Bear hacking group is working to gather emails in its latest espionage campaign against the U.S. political system. Feike Hacquebord, a security researcher who led the report, said he based his conclusions on the discovery of a group of suspicious websites that looked like the U.S. Senate’s internal email system. Hacquebord said he cross-referenced the sites’ digital fingerprints with the ones used exclusively by Fancy Bear. The sites, set up in June and September, match a similar email harvesting technique Fancy Bear used against French President Emmanuel Macron during his campaign in April. “They’re still very active—in making preparations at least—to influence public opinion again,” Hacquebord said. “They are looking for information they might leak later.”