FBI and CISA assure voters it is ‘unlikely’ that malicious cyber activity will affect midterm elections

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a joint statement this week ensuring United States voters that the upcoming midterm election is very unlikely to be disrupted by any “malicious cyber activity.”

In the statement, the two agencies revealed they have no reporting “to suggest 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.”

The agencies said that they have sufficient safeguards against any malicious cyber attacks, including phishing, ransomware, denial of service, or domain spoofing, that may be used in order to disrupt the election infrastructure.

The statement goes on to acknowledge that “election systems that house voter registration information or manage non voting election processes continue to be a target of interest for malicious threat actors.”

However, the agencies note that previous attacks that have been thwarted remained localized and did not result in any large-scale disruptions. 

The announcement comes a month ahead of the United States’ midterm elections. Many races remain hotly contested with only weeks to go before voters go to the polls, and mentions of former president Donald Trump’s supporters’ belief that the 2020 election was stolen have created concern that election integrity may be compromised in the eyes of some voters. 

The FBI and CISA say voters should not be concerned. “Given the extensive 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.”