Elections increasingly attract cyber operations that target politicians, businesses and the public. These activities range from espionage campaigns against political parties, to influence operations seeking to shape opinions, sow discontent or undermine democratic processes.
This newsletter, published twice a month, provides an overview of key cyber incidents and emerging threats related to the upcoming October 2026 general elections in Brazil. It offers recommendations on how organizations and individuals can mitigate and protect against these threats.
Key incidents
In this issue we focus on:
Malware campaign leverages US-Venezuela themes to target US government entities
The targeted campaign using a custom C++ backdoor implant (LOTUSLITE) was sent to US Government (USG) and policy-related entities, and used developments in Venezuela as a lure, according to the Acronis Threat Research Unit (TRU).
AI likely to feature in Brazil’s 2026 electoral cycleBrazil has implemented a regulatory framework around the use of AI in electoral campaigns, including the electoral court banning deepfakes, chatbots simulating candidates, and false content. Enforcing these prohibitions will be difficult, however, and AI-enabled mis- and disinformation is likely to proliferate in the 2026 electoral cycle.
80% of phishing emails are at least partially generated using AI.
(Source: ViperX COO, Rodolfo Almeida, December 2025)
Using AI tools, such as deepfakes and voice cloning, results in much more realistic and contextualized social engineering campaigns. AI tools have also begun generating malware that changes its signature with each execution, helping to bypass traditional defenses.
Mitigation advice twice a month
- Closely track geopolitical developments and stay informed about regional tensions and foreign state-linked cyber activities, especially those targeting political parties and policy makers. Adjust security postures in response to intelligence about increased offensive cyber operations in Latin America.
- Prioritize controls that specifically address socially engineered attacks rather than relying solely on traditional malware detection. This includes reinforcing multi‑factor authentication, tightening email filtering rules and ensuring reporting mechanisms for suspicious messages are simple and well communicated.
- Establish internal processes to rapidly identify, assess and respond to false or manipulated content that could affect operations, personnel or reputation.
- Security teams should brief staff on the risk of highly targeted emails and attachments tied to current geopolitical events; and ensure endpoint and network monitoring is tuned to detect low‑volume, high‑sophistication intrusion attempts.
- Review existing incident response playbooks to confirm they explicitly address scenarios involving disinformation, data leaks or politically motivated intrusions. Table‑top exercises should simulate election‑period incidents.
- Conduct due diligence checks on third-party AI providers focused on data handling, security controls and regulatory exposure, particularly where AI systems may influence communications, analytics or decision‑making during the election cycle.
Targeted malware campaign leverages US-Venezuela events as lures
- January 2026: A highly targeted malware campaign aimed at USG and policy-related entities is leveraging a politically themed ZIP archive, and the backdoor is being tracked as LOTUSLITE by the Acronis TRU team.
Implications: Although the campaign appears to have focused on USG entities, similar tactics and techniques are highly likely to be used against Brazilian governmental and policy-making entities. Threat actors involved in such targeting are typically focused on espionage rather than financial gain, and have often used themes tied to international conferences and region-specific events to enable targeted intrusion.
Acronis TRU described LOTUSLITE as a custom C++ implant that communicates with a hard-coded internet protocol (IP)-based command and control server, supporting basic remote tasking and data exfiltration.
AI likely to feature in Brazil’s 2026 electoral cycle - Brazil, January 2026: Brazil approaches its 2026 election cycle with recently implemented regulations around the misuse of AI, to include prohibitions by Brazil’s TSE against deepfakes, false content and chatbots simulating candidates. However, enforcing these regulations will likely be challenging and they are still largely untested.
Implications: The Brazilian voting population increasingly relies on AI for candidate and election information – particularly for more local legislative elections, where decisions can be made late in the cycle.
Both misinformation and disinformation can flourish in such an environment, and it is unlikely that any regulatory or monitoring authority will be able to effectively and consistently track and remove all such algorithmic influence. Brazil’s relative political polarization and increasing distrust of institutions are also likely to contribute to a challenging information environment in the lead-up to the 2026 election.
Focus on: The chaotic rise of AI and global regulatory volatility
Agentic AI is being rapidly adopted by companies (and their employees), developers, and members of the public, creating a myriad of new attack surfaces for threat actors. Sanctioned (and unsanctioned) AI agents are proliferating and cyber security leaders / defenders are struggling to identify all of these new touchpoints and implement effective controls.
At the same time, shifting geopolitical landscapes and evolving regulatory and compliance regimes have turned such new technology adoption into a critical business risk, and senior executives are increasingly being held liable for compliance-related failures. Internal collaboration across leadership teams at these companies is key, as is establishing clear accountability and robust incident playbooks mapped to recognized industry standards.
Electoral protection in Brazil: cybersecurity training and support
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