Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) pressed a choose group of area registrars within the U.S. to deal with alleged abuse of their providers by Russian affect operations throughout the 2024 election cycle.
Warner addressed his letter Thursday to an inventory of corporations included in a Division of Justice (DOJ) affidavit final month.
“Information included in the affidavit supporting recent seizure of a number of these domains provides further indication of your industry’s apparent inattention to abuses by foreign actors engaged in covert influence,” Warner wrote to Namecheap, GoDaddy, Cloudflare, NewFold Digital, NameSilo and Verisign.
His request comes after the Biden administration condemned Russian efforts to affect the election, now lower than two weeks away, and after DOJ seized 32 internet domains that Russia has used for its affect marketing campaign.
“In the context of the U.S. 2024 Presidential Election, the prospect of foreign actors impersonating state and local government websites — and seeding narratives related to election outcomes or electoral processes — is especially dire,” Warner wrote within the letter.
The senator urged registrars to take speedy motion.
“In the interim, your company must take immediate steps to address the continued abuse of your services for foreign covert influence — particularly in the days preceding, and weeks immediately following, Election Day,” Warner stated.
“With the prospect of a close election — and declassified intelligence demonstrating the past practice of foreign adversaries in spreading narratives that undermine confidence in election processes — Americans will be particularly reliant on media organizations and state and local government websites to provide authoritative and accurate election information,” the senator wrote.
He added that Congress “may need to evaluate legislative remedies that promote greater diligence across the global domain name ecosystem.”
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