FBI and CISA Publish Advisory on Malicious Cyber Activity Against Election Infrastructure

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published a joint public service announcement about malicious cyber activity aiming to compromise election infrastructure.

According to the document released on Tuesday, the agencies said attempts to compromise election infrastructure are unlikely to result in large–scale disruptions or prevent voting.

“As of the date of this report, the FBI and CISA have no reporting to suggest cyber activity has ever prevented a registered voter from casting a ballot, compromised the integrity of any ballots cast, or affected the accuracy of voter registration information,” the document reads.

“Any attempts tracked by the FBI and CISA have remained localized and were blocked or successfully mitigated with minimal or no disruption to election processes.”

The announcement also clarified that officials use a variety of controls to mitigate the likelihood of malicious cyber activity affecting the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of election infrastructure systems.

Also, to this end, CISA released a list of free cybersecurity tools for the election community last August.

“Given the extensive safeguards in place and distributed nature of election infrastructure, the FBI and CISA continue to assess that attempts to manipulate votes at scale would be difficult to conduct undetected,” reads the announcement.

“The FBI and CISA will continue to respond quickly to any potential threats, provide recommendations to harden election infrastructure, notify stakeholders of threats and intrusion activity, and impose risks and consequences on cyber actors seeking to threaten US elections.”

The FBI and CISA are not the only government agencies supporting the public during the midterm elections.

At the end of August, the US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and the National Security Agency (NSA) established the Election Security Group (ESG), a body to protect electoral procedures from hacking and disinformation before and during the November elections.