CISA Opens Election War Room to Combat Escalating Threats

The top cyber defense agency in the United States is opening up an election operations war room to provide frontline support across the country and help combat potential threats in the final days of the 2024 presidential election.

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Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said Wednesday her agency is establishing the temporary office to coordinate with local election officials and surge resources wherever needed leading up to Election Day. Officials recently told Information Security Media Group the agency is “committing more resources than ever before” towards securing election infrastructure while deploying a new team of advisers nationwide to work hand-in-hand with state election offices (see: Inside CISA’s Unprecedented Election Security Mission).

The election operations room will “bring in all of [CISA’s] partners so that we can monitor what’s happening and so that we can be there to support election officials if they need us,” Easterly said during an interview with Washington Post Live on election security. She added that “there is a firehose of information coming at the American people” in the final days of the election, warning “a lot of that information is being spread and amplified by our foreign adversaries who are trying to undermine American confidence in elections.”

Cyber and physical threats appear to be escalating in the final weeks of the campaign season, with reports of ballot drop boxes set on fire in the Pacific Northwest and increased foreign malign influence operations targeting both campaigns. Police arrested Wednesday a Florida teenager after he allegedly aggressively brandished a machete at two women waiving signs in support of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. But a Tuesday report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies noted that foreign interference efforts have struggled to gain “significant traction” due to federal agencies and private sector partners exposing Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence campaigns before they can go viral (see: Election Threats Escalating as US Voters Flock to the Polls).

Federal authorities are also investigating attempts to exfiltrate sensitive data from top campaign officials, including Iranian-linked actors targeting former Republican nominee former-President Donald Trump’s campaign materials and a Chinese telecom hack. Officials confirmed Monday in a statement to Information Security Media Group that the prominent Cyber Safety Review Board will initiate a review into the Chinese hack “at the appropriate time” (see: Key Federal Cyber Panel to Probe Chinese Telecoms Hacking).

Congress has demanded answers from telecommunications giants AT&T, Verizon and Lumen over the hacking of U.S. communications infrastructure, noting how the hack specifically targeted systems involved in court-authorized wiretaps. The attack “appears to be geared towards intelligence collection” and is “extremely alarming for both economic and national security reasons,” a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote in October letters sent to the telecoms firms (see: Congress Seeks Urgent Action After Chinese Telecom Hack).

Recent reporting indicates the Chinese hackers may have targeted Trump and his running mate, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance, as well as Eric Trump and Jared Kushner’s call and text data.

Source told CNN that removing Chinese hackers from telecom networks is proving difficult. The threat actor is blending in with ordinary internet traffic in routers and switches, making it difficult to detect.

The Washington Post reported the Biden administration convened a multi-agency team to confront the telecom hacking crisis, which affects up to a dozen companies, the Post said, citing “two people familiar with the investigation.

Despite growing concerns around the election security landscape, Easterly sought to assure voters that CISA’s coordination with federal and private sector partners throughout the year will deliver enhanced protections and the most secure vote in the nation’s history.

“Our election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said Wednesday. “No matter who you vote for, your vote will be counted as cast.”