DHS: No evidence so far of foreign hacking in midterm elections

Election officials said Tuesday that they have not yet seen attempts by foreign adversaries to breach voting systems as Americans cast their ballots in the midterm elections.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Chris Krebs, the undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said at a briefing that cyber actors are scanning systems for possible vulnerabilities at the same level they normally do.

{mosads}Nielsen also repeated her assertion that Tuesday’s election “will be the most secure elections in the modern era.”

“At this time we have no indication of compromise to our nation’s election infrastructure that would prevent voting, change vote counts, or distrust the ability to tally votes,” she said.

Nielsen did say that the department is seeing consistent efforts from nation states to attempt to sow discord and influence Americans through social media.

Facebook and Twitter have both pulled accounts and pages in the run-up to the election that were traced to foreign governments or found to be spreading misinformation. Facebook on the eve of the election said that it had suspended about 115 accounts for coordinated “suspicious” activity.

Krebs acknowledged that some misinformation had been spread about the elections, like what days to vote or when polls closed, but added that it largely had been accidentally shared.

Tuesday’s midterms are a critical test for election officials throughout the United States, after Russia was determined to have successfully interfered in the 2016 race.