1️⃣ Don't panic about the election technology glitches we're seeing.
A malfunction "may slow things down," Krebs told me, and "lines may get a little bit longer," but "that's part of the ‘keep calm, vote on’ [idea] — we want some patience out there."
2️⃣ Election officials are much better prepared for cyber threats than they were in 2016.
"Across the board, we've seen behaviors improve," Krebs said, due in part to better fed/state/local/private-sector coordination.
3️⃣ Thanks to a virtual chat room run by CISA, election officials will have a place to report problems. Krebs told me about how this helped debunk misinformation in Ohio in 2018.
4️⃣ It's all hands on deck at federal agencies.
CISA and the NSA have exchanged personnel at their HQs, CISA's ops center has reps from other agencies (though Krebs is carefully managing on-site workforce due to Covid), and CISA personnel are stationed across the country.
5️⃣ While CISA can't declassify intel about election threats on its own, it will push other agencies to do so.
“We will always push for more information to get out there, particularly if it helps inform certain decision-making processes.” Krebs told me.
6️⃣ Krebs said the White House hasn't interfered in CISA's election security mission.
“There has not been any political manipulation or direction or interference with our operations,” he said.
Independent observers agree and profess confidence in CISA's work.
As we near the end of a process that Krebs has spent years preparing for, he sounds upbeat.
“I have always felt that … we have been empowered and able to do our job” at CISA, he said, “and I think we've been pretty damn successful at doing it.”
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The FBI is investigating robocalls falsely telling people in several states that they can vote tomorrow if lines today are too long, a senior CISA official told reporters on a briefing call. #ElectionDay
The federal government is not aware of any election technology issues beyond the ones that have been publicly reported, a senior CISA official says.
“What we’ve shared and what’s out there is pretty much the body of knowledge" so far.
@boblord The DNC, you may remember, played an unfortunate starring role in the cyber meltdown that was 2016.
Four years later, w/ the experience that Lord brings from top security roles at Yahoo and Twitter, the committee has made major improvements & thinks it's in a much better place.
Lord's team has trained DNC employees to incorporate security into everything they do.
At the committee, just like his former employers Yahoo & Twitter, people want to move fast, and it's his job to "make sure that somebody is curating and managing [tech] for the long haul."
The all-ballot-marking-devices setup in the perennially troubled and unexpectedly competitive state of Georgia creates the risk of widespread technical malfunctions, as happened in June.
These problems will be temporary, but they could sow chaos and still depress turnout.
In all-important Pennsylvania, which replaced its paperless machines after '18, some counties have opted for a more convenient but riskier voting-machine configuration.
Not only does this "tabulator mode" add risk, but it could confuse voters, stoking more fears.
BREAKING: A federal grand jury has charged six Russian hackers with launching the devastating NotPetya malware, hacking the 2018 Olympics and the Ukrainian power grid, targeting the 2017 French election, and several other campaigns.
Press conference starting soon.
We've known about all of these operations, but the indictment goes into detail about who did what and how.
Stand by for more.
This campaign represents the “most disruptive and most destructive series of attacks ever attributed to a single group,” says John Demers, head of DOJ's National Security Division, as press conference begins.