US Cyber Command Were Running An 'Election Special'

US Cyber Command has expanded its overseas operations aimed at finding foreign hacking groups during the 2020 Election in an effort to identify not only Russian hacking tactics, but also those of China and Iran. The  US teams aimed at identifying malicious foreign cyber actors before the Presidential  election, conducting missions to  seek out not only Russian hackers, but those from all major adversaries, including Iran and China. 

A military spokesman said that cyber operations against foreign actors, across the whole spectrum of offensive and defensive measures, began ahead of the election and will continue after the election.

This expansion of Cyber Command's "hunt forward" operations has been built on an effort that began in 2018 to identify foreign hackers and tactics. While a senior election security official from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency told reporters that "it has been quiet" as far as foreign interference and malicious cyber activity are concerned, they also cautioned that "we're not out of the woods yet", making it clear relevant agencies remain on high alert. 

Cyber Command said those efforts had uncovered malware being used by adversarial hacking teams. Other government agencies used that information to help state and local officials shore up their election system defenses and to notify the public about threats.In addition to new operations in Europe to pursue Russian hackers. Cyber Command has sent teams to the Middle East and Asia over the past two years to help find Iranian, Chinese and North Korean hacking teams and identify the tools they were using to break into computer networks. 

Cyber Command sends teams of experts overseas to work with partner and allied nations to help them find, identify and remove hostile intrusions on their government or military computer networks. For the allied nations, inviting Cyber Command operatives not only helps improve their network defenses but also demonstrates to adversaries that the United States military is working with them. 

For the United States, the deployments give their experts an early look at tactics that potential adversaries are honing in their own neighborhoods, techniques that could later be used against Americans.

CISA:     CNN:      New York Times:   Wired:   Washington Post: 

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