Warner said that the way election results are communicated from states to the public need to be particularly protected, and news organizations should be on guard. “The biggest threat is who reports the votes and having that hacked,” West Virginia’s secretary of state, Mac Warner, told CNN last month at a cybersecurity training event he organized for local election officials. In 2016, the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-linked troll group that has since been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, targeted Hillary Clinton voters with false information telling them they could vote by text message or online.īut there appears to be growing concern among election officials that the communication of election results could also be vulnerable. But the test, he says, will come if California’s elections come under attack.ĭisinformation campaigns could seek to misinform voters in an effort to deter them from casting a ballot. Padilla says his team is in regular contact with the major social media companies, all of which call California home, and is happy with their cooperation so far. Padilla’s office says California is hiring half a dozen cybersecurity communications professionals and others to help mitigate against the risk. The center is advising officials to establish plans to monitor and, when warranted, respond to misinformation on social media. The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School is briefing election officials on what to do if they are the target of a conventional hack, a disinformation operation, or both. He points out, “what you’ve got, what was clearly a more successful line of attack was this disinformation campaign, and it’s interesting, and it needs to inform what we’re doing, but it’s a really tough place to operate in because we don’t have much, if any, control in there.”Īlex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, told CNN, “There’s always been a concern about the integrity of our elections and there’s always been a concern about misinformation, disinformation being disseminated around campaigns.”īut Padilla, who is the only secretary of state to attend Def Con this year, said the threat of disinformation campaigns has heightened due to social media. But he says when it comes to the second part, the use of hacked material, things get more difficult. Praetz says when it comes to the first part of an attack, the targeting of election infrastructure, election officials across the country are taking steps to mitigate against a breach – steps they can take because they are responsible for those systems. “Obviously, we look at what happened in 2016 and what we should expect in the future is a two-pronged attack,” says Noah Praetz, the director of elections for Cook County in Illinois. If state election boards were to be targeted in this way, where voter information or voting systems were hacked, and then a coordinated campaign to disseminate or weaponize that information were to follow on social media, it could lead to widespread confusion that could undermine the integrity of an election could ensue, some officials fear. uGIIS9DTqz- Donie O'Sullivan August 10, 2018 Voting machines and other election devices in place at #DEFCON in Caesar’s Palace in Vegas tonight, ready to be hacked tomorrow. First came the successful penetration of campaign emails, and then a coordinated information warfare campaign that involved the dissemination of the hacked materials through specially-built websites and social media accounts, including DCLeaks, and through other sites like WikiLeaks. Recent indictments of Russian nationals by special counsel Robert Mueller allege Russia’s targeting of the Democratic party and the Clinton campaign in 2016 was two-fold. What, some of them ask, if they fall victim to a coordinated information warfare campaign? While such hacks are a cause of concern for election officials, they are increasingly looking beyond the threats against traditional election infrastructure like voting machines and voting databases and more to the threat of disinformation. The event, now in its second year, is supposed to demonstrate vulnerabilities in America’s vast election infrastructure.Īfter a few hours on Friday, one hacker was essentially able to turn a voting machine into a jukebox, making it play music and display animations. Organizers of a “voting village” at the annual Def Con hacker convention have packed a conference room at Caesars Palace with voting machines and have asked civically-curious hackers to wreak havoc. As hackers sit down to break into dozens of voting machines here in Las Vegas this weekend, some state and local election officials that have flown in to witness the spectacle at one of the world’s largest hacking conventions are becoming increasingly concerned about another threat to November’s midterm elections: information warfare.
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