FBI-CISA PSA: Malicious Cyber Activity Against Election Infrastructure Unlikely to Disrupt or Prevent Voting

The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have published a Public Service Announcement (PSA) assessing that any attempts by cyber actors to compromise election infrastructure are unlikely to result in largescale disruptions or prevent voting.

To date, the FBI and CISA have no reporting to suggest malicious cyber activity has ever prevented a registered voter from casting a ballot, compromised the integrity of any ballots cast, or affected the accuracy of voter registration information. Any attempts tracked by the government have remained localized and were blocked or successfully mitigated with minimal or no disruption to election processes. The PSA emphasizes that, “the public should be aware that election officials use a variety of technological, physical, and procedural controls to mitigate the likelihood of malicious cyber activity (e.g., phishing, ransomware, denial of service, or domain spoofing) affecting the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of election infrastructure systems or data that would alter votes or otherwise disrupt or prevent voting.” And given the vast safeguards in place and distributed nature of election infrastructure, the FBI and CISA continue to assess that attempts to manipulate votes at scale would be difficult to conduct undetected. The FBI and CISA encourages the public to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to their local FBI field office. Read the full PSA here.