$10 Million Reward by RJF to Catch Cyber Intruders
The United States of America will be having its presidential elections in November 2020. This is a crucial period when the intruders will be trying to compromise the critical information related to the campaigns for undermining the election process.
During the 2016 Presidential elections, Russian hackers had leaked Hillary Clinton’s emails and documents to turn the elections in favor of Donald Trump. Therefore, the risk of foreign intrusion is evident, and the authorities are trying to do everything in their power.
The Announcement
The U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) has recently announced a reward of up to $ 10 million for any information that indicates any interference with the U.S. federal, state, or local elections illegal cyber activities by violation section 1030 of title 18. The Diplomatic Security Service is administering this reward.
The reward is announced for “…information leading to the identification or location of any person who, while acting at the direction of or under the control of a foreign government, interferes with any United States federal, state, or local election…”
Persons engaged in certain malicious cyber operations targeting election or campaign infrastructure may be subject to prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030. The act criminalizes unauthorized computer intrusions and other computer-related frauds. It prohibits unauthorized accessing as well as transmitting information to non-legitimate recipients.
The Department’s step is to encourage anyone with any foreign intrusion information in the U.S. elections to contact them. It has provided its official email I.D. address [email protected] and twitter address https://twitter.com/RFJ_USA for the communication. Since 1984, the reward program has helped the government uncover many possible threats, and it hopes to do that with the election meddling as well.
This is the third reward that the program has offered this year. Russian interference was detected in February this year, and in June, China and Iran based hackers were identified by Google. In case, the malicious activities against the election campaigns are not identified on time, the U.S. political organizations will become vulnerable. This makes it all the more important for the reward program to bear results.
