Election officials are confronting a wave of threats and security challenges coming from a troubling source: inside the election system itself. In interviews on the sidelines of the National Association of Secretaries of State’s summer conference, a dozen chief election administrators detailed a growing number of “insider threats” leading to attempted or successful election security breaches aided by local officials. The most prominent was in Colorado, where a county clerk was indicted for her role in facilitating unauthorized access to voting machines. But there have been similar instances elsewhere, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio. Beyond security breaches, other insider efforts to undermine elections have sprouted. In New Mexico last month, the board of commissioners in Otero County — a predominantly Republican county along the state’s southern border with Texas — refused to certify primary election results, citing unfounded claims about the security of voting machines that are rooted in conspiracy theories about hacked election equipment from the 2020 election. “What’s clear is this is a nationally coordinated effort,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat. “It’s multi-year, multi-faceted … not just pressuring election officials, but pressuring local elected officials as well.” Election officials fear the handful of publicly disclosed incidents over the last two years are only the start of a wave ahead of the 2022 and 2024 elections.
National: FBI director expects onslaught of digital assaults targeting midterm elections | Suzanne Smalley/CyberScoop
Federal law enforcement officials are preparing for a wave of multilayered cyberattacks and influence operations from China, Russia and Iran in the run up to November’s midterm elections, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday. Wray pointed to a multi-pronged 2020 Iranian cyber campaign to intimidate and influence American voters, saying officials expect to see more such incidents in the coming months. The risks posed to the American public by “relatively modest hacking” increase exponentially when foreign governments layer such efforts with influence operations and disinformation that “causes panic or lack of confidence in our election infrastructure,” Wray said during a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University in New York City. Officials worry about how the impact of such threats might be magnified by what Wray called “multidisciplinary” cyber operations. The FBI is working closely with U.S. Cyber Command to manage election threats and when the two agencies are in “combat tempo” their respective teams are in touch every two hours at a minimum, Wray said.
Full Article: FBI director expects onslaught of digital assaults targeting midterm elections