There has been a surge in posts on the dark web concerning election interference in the first two months of the year, the "vast majority" of which reference the U.S. presidential election and were written in Russian, according to analysts at NordVPN.
The virtual private network firm found that in 2022, there were 26 such discussions on the hidden forums, but it increased to 101 last year—a rise of nearly 400 percent. In January and February alone, the company traced 35 discussions.
"The vast majority of the posts in the dark web were about [the] upcoming presidential elections in the United States," Laura Tyrylyte, NordVPN's head of global public relations, told Newsweek. "Most of the posts on elections that we found were written in Russian."
The company cautioned that the chatter did not mean that a cyberattack or foreign influence operation was being planned but suggested that improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) generated content could make disinformation easier to produce and more convincing.
"Hackers don't publicly disclose their plans to commit cybercrimes," Tyrylyte said.
Rather than being "attempts to hack or [the] planning of operations," the figures were indicative of "general interest" among the dark web community in electoral disruption.
Russian election interference has been a concern since 2016, when the Kremlin meddled in the U.S. presidential election in a "sweeping and systematic fashion," a report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller found in 2019.
Hackers stole documents from the Democratic National Committee and then leaking them online, as well as instigated a coordinated social media campaign that favored Donald Trump and disparaged Hillary Clinton.
Russian President Vladimir Putin later joked that he would "definitely do it" again in the 2020 election. In 2021, a report by U.S. intelligence agencies found he had authorized a range of government organizations to conduct interference operations aimed at undermining Joe Biden, while Iran carried out a "multi-pronged cover influence campaign" intended to undercut Trump.
In late February, Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration's national security adviser, told NBC News that there was "plenty of reason to be concerned" about Russia trying to do the same in 2024 but that officials were being "vigilant."
Experts were said to be most concerned about the use of AI to create fake leaks that could damage candidates.
"There are number of ways how hackers could use AI to influence the U.S. elections, it's just a matter of imagination," Tyrylyte said, noting the recent case of an artificial impersonation of Biden telling Democratic voters in New Hampshire not to vote in the state's primary as "a good example how voice cloning can be used to interrupt democratic processes."
In the past year or so, there has been an explosion in the sophistication and adoption of AI software as the capabilities of the technology improve at pace, allowing for its implementation in an increasing number of cases.
AI models are already able to generate text and images based on simple cues, as well as being used to edit videos and find patterns in large datasets.
But with every positive use of the emerging technology comes the potential for negative ones. AI is already being used to generate disinformation, with deepfakes—digitally doctored content—being used to create involuntary pornography as well as false political narratives.
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Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
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