Iranian 2020 Election Intimidation | Amazon's Dirty Secret | A Hunt For Russian Hackers

Plus: Windows 10 Zero-Click Security Exploit Wanted. Reward: $3 Million

Anyone thinking news about election interference wouldn't be making headlines for another few years can think again.

This last week, the Washington Post reported on an attempt to steal data from an Ohio county’s election network, which took place in May. Sources claimed that the breach occurred inside the office of John Hamercheck, chairman of the Lake County Board of Commissioners, and saw a laptop plug into the network to snoop on "routine network traffic." No sensitive data was stolen, according to the sources.

But there's something else intriguing about what happened in Ohio. It appeared to bear similarities with an attack in Colorado earlier this year; data from both incidents ended up being distributed at an August “cyber symposium” on election fraud hosted by MyPillow executive Mike Lindell, a Donald Trump ally who has been trying to promote false claims the 2020 election was rigged.

Speaking of election interference, it's been nearly a year since I reported on a hacking attempt that directly targeted voters' data in Maricopa County, Arizona. No charges have yet been publicly filed in that case.

If you have any tips on government surveillance or cybercrime, drop me an email on tbrewster@forbes.com or message me on Signal at +447782376697.

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On those Iranian charges, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the defendants had been accused of hacking into Lee Enterprises, one of the country's largest newspaper owners, as part of an alleged disinformation campaign.

More on Iranian hacking:  the U.S., Australia and the U.K.'s cybersecurity agencies have warned about state-backed hackers targeting critical infrastructure, in some cases with ransomware, via Microsoft Exchange and Fortinet vulnerabilities.

Conti, one of the more active ransomware crews, suffered its own data breach this week. A researcher managed to find the IP address of one of the group's ransomware negotiation page and had access to the site for more than a month, The Record reports.

As many as 20 organizations—including an Iranian embassy, an Italian aerospace company, as well as Syrian and Yemeni government entities—were targeted by a group of hackers that cybersecurity researchers linked to Israeli surveillance company Candiru that was recently blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Winner Of The Week

The BBC's Joe Tidy went to Russia to try to track down some of the world's most wanted cybercriminals. He didn't speak with any of them directly, but he did do a remarkable interview with the father of Maksim Yakubets, who has been accused of running a crew dubbed Evil Corp, allegedly responsible for pilfering or extorting as much as $100 million. Watch it here.

Loser Of The Week

Amazon isn't doing a great job of protecting shoppers' data, according to an investigation in Wired. The retail giant's own employees have been looking up celebrity purchases or spying on the shopping habits of people they know, amongst other issues, according to the report.