Attempts to manipulate or distort information to voters are rampant and increase as the countdown to the midterm election in the U.S. begins, especially across social media networks such as Twitter (TWTR) and Facebook (META).
The efforts made by hackers are an attempt to encourage distrust in the election process and increase misinformation as Arizona, Ohio, and Pennsylvania’s Senate seats are being hotly contested while gubernatorial races in Kansas, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Oregon are being closely watched since it’s a toss-up on whether a Democrat or Republican wins.
“A quick glance at any social media platform will show a glut of misinformation intended to sway voters,” Mike Parkin, a senior technical engineer at Vulcan Cyber, a Tel Aviv-based provider of SaaS for enterprise cyber risk remediation, told TheStreet. “While some level of spin is expected in any election, the levels we’ve seen in the last few election cycles and the sheer scale is impressive.”
The majority of the disinformation efforts are conventional propaganda campaigns.
“They use tried and true techniques with a lot of volume and carefully crafted messaging,” he said. “Social media platforms will certainly see bots and trolls, but those aren’t so much hacking as they are simple abuse.”
Social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will be rife with attempts at election-related disinformation, voter suppression, and outright scams, Karim Hijazi, CEO of Prevailion, a Houston-based cyber intelligence company, told TheStreet.
Stopping it is impossible since cybercriminals are lured by the prospect of generating more income from new victims by committing ID and financial theft and other types of fraud, he said.
“The various platforms will have their own ways of dealing with this with varying levels of success, but there's no way to stop it altogether,” Hijazi said. “These threats are now coming at all the platforms with the force of a tsunami, so a certain percentage of them will always get through.”
The cybercriminals running these projects have “no interest whatsoever” in the election and are focused on making a profit, he said.
“It's important for people to be aware of this and to not allow themselves to be baited by some of these attempts,” Hijazi said.
Foreign and domestic threat actors have threatened democracy in the U.S, Parkin said.
“There has been a lot of propaganda over the last few years intended to sow doubt in the process and there will be people who refuse to accept the results even if the election is completely legitimate,” he said. “Security professionals involved in the election need to bring their A-game, document everything, and adhere to the highest standards through the entire process.”
Attackers use social channels because they are free to use, widely available, and with a reach that’s both instant and global, Justin Fimlaid, president of NuHarbor Security, a Colchester, Vermont-based cybersecurity and risk management company specializing in local/state government and education, told TheStreet.
“Online outlets continue to be a primary vehicle to amplify malicious storylines, including false narratives and exaggerations of fact,” he said. “Social messaging applications, online journals, spoofed websites, emails, digital messaging platforms, and fake online personas are effective mechanisms to amplify false claims and disinformation.”
