Cybersecurity officials issue warning over election influence, violence
DALLAS - The head of the country’s cybersecurity agency said election infrastructure is more secure than ever. But she warned that people will still try to influence the election and threaten violence against election workers.
The Cyber and Infrastructure Security Agency was created following Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Jen Easterly, the director of the CISA, held a virtual news conference on Friday for Texas and the surrounding states, just as news broke that Chinese hackers tried to compromise phones belonging to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance.
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Voting in the United States is decentralized. It’s not online and is different in each state.
Easterly said that actually strengthens the election process and makes it next to impossible for a malicious actor to hack voting machines in a way that would have a material outcome on the election without their efforts being detected.
But it does not mean people should let their guard down.
"We do have to recognize that the threat environment has never been more complex. There are cyber threats from ransomware and distributed denial of service attacks on websites. There are very real threats from our foreign adversaries like Russia, Iran, and China, who are conducting maligned influence operations and disinformation with two key goals in mind. First is to undermine American confidence in the integrity of our elections and, more broadly, trust in our Democratic institutions and to stoke partisan discord and to pit Americans against each other. We cannot allow that," she said.
Easterly said there have also been very concerning threats to election officials.
Workers for both parties and their families have experienced bullying or threats of violence stemming from unfounded claims that the 2020 election did not represent the will of the American people.
There is a "firehose of disinformation happening all across the country," Easterly said.
She added that the best source of information is local and state election officials, not posts from random voices on social media.