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Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020

Have law enforcement agencies warned that hackers could threaten the integrity of the US election?

Jacob Alabab-Moser, Gigafact
yes

In September 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned that hackers, including foreign actors, could spread false information about voter suppression, ballot fraud or other problems "in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions."

Ransomware, a malicious software, could also be used by nation-states and criminal networks to disrupt election systems like voter-registration databases. The U.S. military and Microsoft took recent action against TrickBot, a ransomware distributor that has infected over a million computing devices since 2016.

In October 2020, CISA and the FBI released an alert about malicious cyber activity that in some instances "resulted in unauthorized access to elections support systems." They had no evidence that election data was compromised.

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