Foreign Hackers Threaten US Election Security

The FBI and yhe US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have issued an announcement to alert the public to the potential threat of foreign interference in reporting the 2020 US election results and other disinformation campaigns. According to these government agencies, foreign actors and cybercriminals will likely  create or alter websites, and share or create false social media content that discredits the electoral process and undermines confidence in US democratic institutions.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, postal ballots will be widely used in the elections this year, leaving officials with an incomplete vote on election night. Foreign threat actors will likely take advantage of this if it occurs.

State and local elections typically take several days to certify election results, ensuring that every vote cast legally has been included in the results. Foreign actors and cybercriminals could use this time gap to their advantage, releasing fake reports that claim voter suppression, cyberattack targeting election infrastructure, ballot fraud, or other issues that it claims occurred to undermine the election’s legitimacy. 

The US government agencies are urging Americans to take extra care in ensuring the legitimacy of their information and seeking multiple sources.

One example recently is where voters and election administrators who emailed Leanne Jackson, the clerk of rural Hamilton County in central Texas, received bureaucratic-looking replies. “Re: official precinct results.” But Jackson didn’t send the messages. Instead, they came from Sri Lankan and Congolese email addresses, and they cleverly hid malicious software inside a Microsoft Word attachment. By the time Jackson learned about the forgery, it was too late. Hackers continued to fire off look-alike replies. Jackson’s three-person office, already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic, ground to a near standstill.

The type of malware deployed against Hamilton, called Emotet, often serves as a delivery mechanism for later ransomware attacks, in which swindlers commandeer a victim’s computer and freeze its files until a ransom is paid. Emotet tricks users into clicking on plausible-looking messages and following phony instructions that in reality disable security settings in Microsoft Office. If successful, the ruse allows the malware to hijack the victim’s email conversations and send phony replies from bogus accounts. Malware attached to the messages is primed for a new set of targets automatically selected from the victim’s inbox, further spreading the infection.

US officials have expressed concern that those attacks, which have paralysed government agencies, police departments, schools and hospitals, could potentially disrupt the election.

Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which specializes in establishing best practices for political campaigns and election officials, said in a February 2018 report that election officials should “create a proactive security culture.” For political campaigns, the group suggested using cloud-based email and office software, which are more likely to neutralise threats like Emotet before they reach a user’s inbox. Experts said smaller governments with fewer resources should heed that advice.

The county’s email system lacks two-factor authentication, a standard protection involving a second means of verifying a user’s identity. It also hasn’t implemented DMARC, a system that helps organisations and businesses confirm that emails sent from their addresses are authentic.

The FBI and CISA urge the American public to critically evaluate the sources of the information they consume and to seek out reliable and verified information from trusted sources, such as state and local election officials. The US public should also be aware that if foreign actors or cyber criminals were able to successfully change an election-related website, the underlying data and internal systems would remain uncompromised.

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