Report details new cyber threats to elections

Election officials face a wide range of new cybersecurity threats stemming from voting changes spurred by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a report released Friday.

The report, compiled by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, lays out threats such as attempts to target election officials working on unsecured networks at home, recovering from voter registration system outages and securing online ballot request systems.

“Voters are already placing increased demands on online registration systems and mail ballot options,” the authors wrote in the report. “At the same time, the risk of cyberattacks from foreign state and nonstate actors alike remains.”

Lawrence Norden, director of the Brennan Center’s Election Reform Program and a co-author of the report, told The Hill that election officials were already faced with cybersecurity threats, but they’re now also facing COVID-19 challenges.

He pointed to the sharp increase in mail-in voting to help avoid the spread of COVID-19 at the polls, and the new concerns around keeping poll workers safe, as raising unexpected security concerns.

“I am concerned that making big changes in a presidential election year is really not something you want to do,” Norden said. “We don’t have a choice, it’s a concern of just technical failures and that these new systems might represent appealing targets to foreign adversaries.”

Former special counsel Robert Mueller, along with U.S. intelligence officials and the Senate Intelligence Committee, have concluded that Russian actors targeted election infrastructure in all 50 states during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, and successfully accessed systems in at least two states. There is no evidence any votes were changed.