Russian election interference so far slim

BOSTON, Nov 01 (AP): Russian interference has been minimal so far in the most tempestuous U.S. presidential election in decades. But that doesn't mean the Kremlin can't inflict serious damage. The vulnerability of state and local government networks is a big worry.

One troubling wildcard is the potential for the kind of ransomware attacks now affecting U.S. hospitals. Russian-speaking cybercriminals are demanding ransoms to unscramble data they've locked up. It's uncertain whether they are affiliated with the Kremlin or if the attacks are timed to coincide with the election.

U.S. national security officials have repeatedly expressed confidence in the integrity of the election. And they report little actual election meddling of consequence from Moscow outside of disinformation operations.

There have been phishing attempts aimed at breaking into the networks of political campaigns, operatives and think tanks, but no indication that valuable political information was stolen. That's in contrast to the 2016 Russian hack-and-leak operation that U.S. officials say was aimed at boosting Donald Trump's campaign.

"The big story so far is how little we have seen from Russia during the course of this election," said Dmitri Alperovitch, former chief technical officer of Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity firm hired by Democrats to probe the 2016 hack-and-leak operation.

But U.S. intelligence officials still consider Russia the most serious foreign cyberthreat, and fear it might try to capitalize on turmoil in an election in which Trump has claimed without basis that the voting is rigged and has refused to commit to honoring the result.

State and local government networks remain highly vulnerable, and dozens have already been battered by ransomware attacks sown largely by a few Russian-speaking criminal gangs.

"If the elections are a mess and we won't find out for weeks who won, that creates all sorts of opportunities for Russians and others to try to cause more divisions and more havoc and chaos," Alperovitch said. Those go beyond disinformation operations - such as Kremlin attempts to smear former Vice President Joe Biden - which he considers "background noise."