Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Christopher Krebs reiterated late Tuesday that foreign hackers won’t be able to change votes cast in the U.S. elections next month, and debuted a new CISA web page that provides advice about how citizens can deal with attempts to spread misinformation about the elections.
“We’re now in the final stretch of the election and tens of millions of voters have already cast their votes free from foreign interference,” Krebs said in a statement.
“We remain confident that no foreign cyber actor can change your vote, and we still believe that it would be incredibly difficult for them to change the outcome of an election at the national level,” the CISA director said, mirroring sentiments expressed by Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf earlier this month.
“The election experience is designed to ensure that technology isn’t a single point of failure and there are measures in place to ensure you can vote and your vote is counted correctly,” Krebs said. “You should have confidence in the integrity of the process and don’t overreact to claims that exaggerate the importance of insignificant events.”
Despite those assurances, Krebs warned that “various actors” could “try to introduce chaos in our elections and make sensational claims that overstate their capabilities,” and said the days and weeks before the election are “the perfect time for our adversaries to launch efforts intended to undermine your confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.”
To combat such attempts, Krebs pointed citizens to CISA’s new election security rumor control page that runs through various disinformation scenarios to help distinguish “between rumors and facts on election security issues.” CISA’s advice to voters includes looking for trusted sources of information, sharing information only from trusted sources, and discouraging others from sharing “sensational but unverified information.”
