In final check-in before Election Day, CISA cites low-level threats, and not much else

Despite “small-scale incidents” during the country’s early voting period and an uptick in online disinformation, the leader of the U.S. cybersecurity agency believes election systems remain secure for Tuesday.

“As we head into tomorrow, I can say with great confidence that our election infrastructure has never been more secure, and that the election community has never been better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections,” Jen Easterly, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters on Monday during a media call.

She said the instances to date have included “low level” distributed denial-of-service activity, criminal destruction of ballot drop boxes, and continued threats targeting election officials. None of them, however, have resulted in “significant impacts to election infrastructure,” Easterly said.

“At this point, we see no evidence of activity that has the potential to materially impact the outcome of the presidential election,” she said, echoing comments she made last week that foreign adversaries had not penetrated election infrastructure.

Cait Conley, a senior adviser and election lead at CISA, later added that the organization has not seen “anything specific” about domestic extremist groups launching cyberattacks on such systems.

Their remarks come as a deluge of disinformation has been unleashed online, most notably on the social media platform known as X.

On Saturday, the FBI flagged two false videos impersonating the agency and making bogus claims. The agency previously issued two statements, along with CISA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that exposed phony online clips and attributed to Russian influence actors.

Today, both CNN and CBS called out images of false polling data ahead of Election Day.

Easterly said her agency is “broadly aware of reports of fabricated videos. I am personally not aware of those specifically, but there are other ones that we are aware of, and we are working with our federal partners on them.”

Easterly declined to directly criticize former President Donald Trump or Elon Musk, who owns X, for making prolific baseless election fraud claims, citing their right to freedom of speech, but she did chastise those who knowingly spread disinformation.

"As I've said very clearly, though, it is very unfortunate and very irresponsible for anybody in a position of influence, of authority, regardless of party or politics, to be spreading inaccurate information about our elections,” she said.

Easterly also said that none of the digital infiltrations by the China-linked hacking group known as Salt Typhoon would affect Tuesday's vote.

“At this point in time, we have no reason to believe that that activity will have any material impact on the outcome of the presidential election.”

Easterly said she plans to make a statement “within days” of the election, as she did after the 2022 midterms, that would address whether the federal government saw any evidence of malicious foreign actors attempting to alter the outcome.

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