Security News > 2022 > September > Mandiant ‘highly confident’ foreign cyberspies will target US midterm elections

Mandiant is "Highly confident" that foreign cyberspies will target US election infrastructure, organizations, and individuals in the run-up to the November midterm elections.

"We have tracked activity from groups associated with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other nations targeting organizations and individuals related to elections in the US and/or other nations with apparent goals ranging from information collection and establishing footholds or stealing data for later activity to one known case of a destructive attack against critical election infrastructure," the Mandiant team said in research published today.

Voting machine hacks aside, Mandiant - which Google is trying to buy for more than $5 billion - suggested who is likely to interfere with or disrupt US elections.

In terms of election misinformation, Russia's Internet Research Agency will likely promote right-wing narratives related to the 2022 midterms as they did in the lead-up to the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The four nation-state sponsored gangs most likely to target the 2022 midterm elections include China's APT41 and APT31, Russia's APT29, and the newly named APT42, which Mandiant earlier this week linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a terrorist group that plotted to murder US citizens including former national security advisor John Bolton.

Mandiant labeled a handful of other threat-groups from these three nations as "Activity possible" around the elections.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/09/08/mandiant_cyberspies_us_elections/