FBI Seeks To Calm Hacking Fears Ahead Of 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections

In a joint public service announcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have sought to calm hacking fears ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections.

The joint-agency PSA statement makes it very clear that malicious hackers targeting election infrastructure is unlikely to result in either large-scale disruptions or prevent people from voting.

As of October 4, the FBI and CISA say that they have zero reporting that suggests “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.”

However, this isn’t the same as there having been no attempts to do so. Indeed, the PSA goes on to confirm that such attempts tracked by the agencies “remained localized and were blocked or successfully mitigated with minimal or no disruption to election processes.”

Stop the steal and disinformation campaigns

Given the widespread ‘stop the steal’ campaign that followed the last Presidential election, elements of which continue to this day, clarity regarding the ability of malicious actors to interfere with the voting process is essential as the midterms fast approach.

The FBI and CISA point to failsafe measures including provisional ballots and backup poll books, logic and accuracy testing, chain of custody, and post-election audits that mitigate everything from denial of service attacks to phishing and even ransomware.

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

This isn’t to say there aren’t other methodologies that can be used to interfere with elections, especially ones as important to the political landscape of the United States as the 2022 midterms. It is conceded that threat actors, which come in many varieties from external state-sponsored groups to domestic political activists, “seek to spread or amplify false or exaggerated claims of cybersecurity compromises to election infrastructure.” Once again, however, the FBI and CISA are quick to pour water on this particular political fire by insisting “these attempts would not prevent voting or the accurate reporting of results.”

Disinformation can and does influence voting, however, and that’s a problem that is much harder to control. Something that both the FBI and CISA concede: “The biggest threat to the election process are influence operations that try to corrupt the integrity of the deliberation. Discussions or messages on social media and forums that deliver unfounded and unverified arguments and facts are typical means to changing a voter’s opinion.”

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