DHS holds election security exercise with states to prep for midterms
With less than three months until the midterm elections, the Department of Homeland Security held a three-day exercise this week that allowed state and local officials to practice warding off an array of cyberthreats, from spear-phishing campaigns to distributed denial of service attacks. The drills, which featured officials from 44 states, the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, among other federal agencies, “explored potential impacts to voter confidence, voting operations, and the integrity of elections,” according to a DHS statement. The Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency charged with distributing $380 million in election-security funding to states, also took part. DHS said private vendors participated in the exercise, but did not name them. The exercise covered several scenarios, according to DHS: spear phishing against election officials; social media manipulation related to political candidates; “disruption” of voter registration IT systems; distributed denial-of-service attacks and “web defacements” affecting board of election […]
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