Intel officials say they anticipate more hacking attempts as US election nears

Senior U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday expressed confidence that they are better poised to respond to foreign cyberattacks on the 2024 election than previous cycles — even after the breach of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by Iranian hackers.

“We are in a really good position,” U.S. Cyber Command and NSA chief Gen. Timothy Haugh said during a panel discussion at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance’s annual summit in Maryland.

He described the relationship between the rest of the federal security apparatus and the two organizations he leads as “incredibly tight.”

CIA Deputy Director David Cohen, who was in the same post when Russia launched its digital assault on the 2016 presidential race, described the government’s response back then as “much more ad hoc.”

The government is in “such better shape than it was in 2016,” he added.

The comments come a little over a week after the FBI and other agencies attributed a breach of the Trump campaign to Iranian hackers, who also attempted to target the Biden-Harris campaign. 

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence previously warned that Iran, along with Russia and China, could all interfere in the upcoming election and that Tehran had developed preference for the Democratic candidate, based on the perception that they would be less likely to increase tensions between the two countries. 

Moscow, meanwhile, is already taking online actions to boost Trump’s candidacy, the spy community concluded.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said foreign cyber and influence operations have evolved in recent years and that it took the government “a moment to catch up with that.”

With less than 70 days before the election, Abbate admitted officials “don’t know what we can expect” from foreign adversaries, but they are “anticipating” more efforts between now and then.

Cohen also pushed back against criticism that the government was too slow to disclose who was behind the Trump campaign hack.

He noted the intelligence community only issued one such announcement during the 2016 cycle and that it “took a while” to make it public, whereas pinning Iran for the recent breach only took a matter of days and ODNI plans to offer more public updates before voters go to the polls.

Cohen also emphasized that the spy community has an obligation “to make pretty damn sure” the information released is accurate.

“Accuracy has got to be the top priority,” he told the audience.