Author Archives: Warren Stewart

National: Officials on alert for cyber threats ahead of election day | Maggie Miller/The Hill

Officials are on alert for threats to elections ahead of Election Day in states including Virginia on Tuesday, one year after a contentious 2020 presidential election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) put out a statement Monday announcing that it would set up an election situational awareness room to monitor elections in over 30 states. This space will serve to coordinate election security efforts between CISA, the key agency responsible for election security, and election officials at the state and local levels, along with representatives from political organizations and other private sector groups. CISA stressed Monday that while preparations were underway to monitor for any security concerns, there is currently “no specific, credible threat to election infrastructure.” “CISA has supported state and local election officials to help secure their systems and push back against malicious actors seeking to disrupt our democratic process and interfere in our elections,” Geoff Hale, the director of CISA’s Election Security Initiative, said in a statement Monday. “We look forward to continuing this work in collaboration with our election partners to ensure the security and resilience of elections in 2021 and beyond.” The agency is also again using its “rumor control” page to help push back against election disinformation and misinformation. The page was created by the agency ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and was a key factor behind President Trump’s decision to fire former CISA Director Christopher Krebs in the days after the election, as CISA and election officials sought to stress the accuracy of the 2020 election results.

Full Article: Officials on alert for cyber threats ahead of election day | TheHill

National: ‘It’s absolutely getting worse’: Secretaries of state targeted by Trump election lies live in fear for their safety and are desperate for protection | Isaac Dovere and Jeremy Herb/CNN

Full Article: Secretaries of state targeted by Trump election lies live in fear for their safety and are desperate for protection – CNNPolitics

National: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. They’re Asking Congress For Help. | Kate Elizabeth Queram/Route Fifty

Two weeks after the 2020 presidential election, a crowd of protesters gathered outside the home of Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state. “Katie, come out and play,” they chanted. “We’re watching you.” The threats, which also targeted Hobbs’ children and husband, came from far-right voters who believed former President Donald Trump’s false assertions that the election was stolen from him in states like Arizona, Hobbs said this week at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.  And they’ve reached far beyond her, she added. “What concerns me more is the near-constant harassment faced by the public servants who administer our elections,” said Hobbs, a candidate for governor in Arizona. “These are people who truly make our government work. They never ran for office or appeared in political ads. But nearly every day they are on the receiving end of abusive phone calls and emails. We’re seeing high turnover among elections staff, and I fear that many more will reach a breaking point and decide that this line of public service is no longer worth it.” The hearing, held Tuesday, gave state and local election officials the opportunity to brief lawmakers on the continued threats and harassment directed their way, most stemming from the failed legal challenges and torrent of misinformation that followed last year’s election. Their testimony urged Congress to pass a suite of voting rights legislation, including a bill that would strengthen protections for election administrators during the voting, counting and certification processes.

Full Article: Elections Officials Are Still Receiving Death Threats and Harassment About the 2020 Election. They’re Asking Congress For Help. – Route Fifty

National: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change. | AJ Vicens/CyberScoop

Security personnel charged with the challenging and high-stakes work of protecting election systems from digital threats might soon have another task on their to-do list: reporting any cyber incidents to the federal government. That’s if election technology, designated critical infrastructure in 2017, falls under proposed rules requiring critical infrastructure owners and operators to notify federal officials about cyber incidents, such as attempted hacks and ransomware attacks. The idea has surfaced again in a recent Stanford Internet Observatory paper authored by a former high ranking election security official who offered recommendations for election administration reform, ranging from increased funding to centralizing election IT infrastructure at the state level. The proposals are consistent with multiple bills under consideration in Congress, where momentum is building to require operators of critical infrastructure — pipeline owners, electrical grids, and other industries key to U.S. interests — to disclose yet-to-be defined cyber “incidents” to the Department of Homeland Security, FBI or officials who can quickly respond to cyberattacks. It remains unclear whether the federal government could mandate that the roughly 10,000 election jurisdictions — ranging from small towns to counties to states — report cyber incidents. And if it could, questions abound about who should hold that responsibility at a time when partisan politics are testing trust in the electoral system.

Full Article: Election officials don’t need to report cyber incidents to the feds. That could soon change.

National: Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Dominion Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows | Alan Feuer/The New York Times

Full Article: Trump Campaign Knew Lawyers’ Dominion Claims Were Baseless, Memo Shows – The New York Times

National: Biden administration expected to name GOP official who challenged Trump’s lies to key election security role | Sean Lyngaas/CNN

Full Article: Kim Wyman: Biden administration expected to name GOP official who challenged Trump’s lies to key election security role – CNNPolitics

National: Election Cybersecurity: Protecting Against Election Cyber Attacks | Phil Muncaster/Government Teechnology

Election cybersecurity is one of the hottest topics in the country today. It dominated both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, and most likely will continue to do so until state and local governments can demonstrate that their voting infrastructure and solutions are as secure and tamper-proof as possible. When voters go to the polls, they might not realize the complex blend of components that power today’s democratic system. Secure these, and you stand a much better chance of mitigating the threat from external actors. Electronic voting is quicker, faster and more accurate than manual voting and counting by hand. But because intelligent systems can be used to gather data and communicate with other systems, they could be exposed to cyber threats. For example, potential vulnerabilities in the machines used to supply registration data might allow unauthorized individuals to manipulate voter information.

Full Article: Election Cybersecurity: Protecting Against Election Cyber Attacks

National: How to Fight False Election Information and Other Problems | Jule Pattison-Gordon/Government Technology

With 2021 municipal races days away, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Chris Krebs discussed the challenges to retaining voter trust in the face of mis- and disinformation, during a Harvard Kennedy School event Thursday. Protecting election systems from cyber and physical attacks was only one battle within the election security war in 2020 — the other, more difficult conflict was defending mindsets against false narratives about what had taken place. “We spent three and a half years working on threat modeling, trying to figure out every possible disruption that could be launched against the election,” Krebs said. ”We were thinking through, ‘You know, it’s not the technical attacks that are keeping us up at night, because we think we’ve got a pretty resilient system with good indicators’ … It came down to the perception hack that we were most worried about.” … As fear spreads, it can quickly transform into real-world threats, with this summer’s ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline serving as a prime example, Krebs said. When the pipeline shut down, a panicked public made runs on gas supplies, accelerating shortages and exacerbating the problem.

Full Article: How to Fight False Election Information and Other Problems