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The UK's deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, says China has been unsuccessful in its attempts to undermine UK elections. Separately, UK parliamentarians - many of whom are known for their criticism of Beijing - had their email accounts targeted by a China state-linked group in 2021.
Feature Two US intelligence bigwigs last week issued stark warnings about foreign threats to American election integrity and security - and the nation's ability to counter these adversaries. A few days earlier, US senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate's Intelligence Committee, told Trellix CEO Bryan Palma that the United States is less prepared to combat foreign intervention in the 2024 elections than was the case in 2020.
State and county officials have been urged to use paper ballots wherever possible over electronic ones, and ensure all election offices have procedures in place to handle potentially lethal substances, specifically fentanyl, anthrax, and ricin. On election threats, "We anticipate AI being leveraged for deception campaigns," said Michelle Alvarez, strategic threat analysis manager for IBM X-Force.
Considering that 2024 is a historic year for elections - with an estimated half of the world's population taking part in democratic votes - this high threat of cyber interference has significant implications for global free society, threatening to undermine confidence in voting processes or - at worst - even alter electoral outcomes, according to Tidal Cyber. A concerning 27% of countries with 2024 national elections face the highest threat levels, facing multiple priority adversary groups and many state-backed groups associated with priority adversary countries.
With more voters than ever in history heading to the polls in 2024, Resecurity has identified a growing trend of malicious cyber-activity targeting sovereign elections globally. In an era of unprecedented geopolitical volatility, this trend is particularly concerning, as Time Magazine notes that 64 countries are set to hold national elections this year.
Iran's anti-Israel cyber operations are providing a window into the techniques the country may deploy in the run-up to the 2024 US Presidential elections, Microsoft says. An analysis of Iran's activity, published by Microsoft Threat Analysis Center today, concluded that Iran may again target US elections as it did in 2020, using more sophisticated techniques from a wealth of different groups.
In this Help Net Security video, Adam Marrè, CISO at Arctic Wolf, explains how state and local governments must focus on cybersecurity as the 2024 election approaches in the United States. This workload becomes even heavier during election years with extra responsibilities.
Schneier has used the phrase "Security theatre" to describe public actions which do not increase security, but which are designed to make the public think that the organization carrying out the actions is taking security seriously. Security theatre has positive aspects too, provided that it is not used as a substitute for actions that would actually improve security.
2024 is a presidential election year in the US. 2016 and 2020 both saw impressive increases in attempts to influence voters through crafty propaganda and social media campaigns run by bots and expert social engineers, along with attempts to influence the vote through abuse of related technologies. In this Help Net Security video, Ryan Maltzen, Cybersecurity Architect at Fortra, discusses how, in past elections, this was more largely a manual process than we should expect with the rise of generative AI and other tools that seem well-positioned to have impacts in this space.