2024 is a big year for elections. Dozens of parliamentary and presidential elections are taking place, including in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, Indonesia and Mexico, and the threat of cyberattacks and artificial intelligence-driven disinformation is not over. has never been higher.
According to the World Economic Forum’s latest report on risk perception, misinformation and misinformation are main risksand the tendency to seek to influence voters before elections and undermine the legitimacy of the results will undoubtedly continue and intensify.
The expected surge of deepfakes
As the technology behind deepfake audio and video production matures and becomes more widely available, we should expect to see more examples spread across social media in the months to come. Recent examples include the “robocall”, which used Joe Biden’s voice to discourage voters from voting in the New Hampshire primary in January 2024. Similar practices have been used more maliciously in Slovakia and the United Kingdom.
During the Slovak elections in September 2023, an audio clip presented as a registration of Michal Simecka, who leads the liberal Progressive Slovakia party, discussing how to rig elections. A second clip used Simecka’s voice to spread fake news that he planned to double the price of beer in the country if he won. The identity of the attacker was not proven and the pro-Russian candidate, former Prime Minister Robert Fico, won the election.
Last October, the leader of the British Labor Party, Sir Keir Starmer, was the victim of a deepfake audio published on the first day of the party’s annual conference. The clip appeared to show him insulting staff members. The situation was exacerbated by X, formerly Twitter, refusing to remove the clip because Labor was unable to provide sufficient evidence that it was fake.
Audio deepfakes appear more likely to be distracting than video, which might be easier to spot as manipulated, at least in the short term. So far, deepfakes have also used public figures, but could, in the future, target poll workers in hotly contested precincts, which could be harder to fire quickly. Counterfeit websites can be created to support claims and spread more misinformation, hosted online and distributed faster than ever, amplifying the reach of deepfakes.
The Associated Press recently sharing a guide on how to spot deepfakes, which we should all study.
Politicians and experts around the world, including in the United Kingdom and the United States, where concerns about election manipulation are greatest, have called for regulations to stop the creation and spread of elections. deepfakes. A letter Signed by hundreds of AI community leaders in February this year, it calls for criminal sanctions for those who create and distribute harmful content. However, even if new rules were implemented in time for the election, it is unlikely to make a difference.
Threat of hacking
Cyberattacks remain possible, and politicians, their families, employees, and party officials have likely been targeted continuously in recent years. Failure to report information stolen from personal and work devices does not mean it did not happen; attackers can wait until the most opportune moment in the election cycle to leak information. Attacks on devices that have gone undetected for months or years could still result in damaging leaks.
Although election interference in the 2020 U.S. election was focused largely on Russia, and will likely remain so for the 2024 election, other countries, political groups, and individuals may also be incentivized to use their resources to influence voters or disrupt elections. process. Recent reports detail how China interfered in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian federal elections, and there is evidence of intention to interfere with the 2024 US elections. Both China and Russia are adept at long-term hacking campaigns.
Other state actors, including Iran and North Korea, could also seek to interfere with elections around the world, but some hacks could come from within the country, as supporters seek to disrupt the opposition. Several countries will hold elections that will be considered neither free nor fair.
Targeted voting infrastructure
Voting machines could be another key target for state-sponsored hackers. Compromising, or appearing to compromise, the security of voting machines during the US elections would only add fuel to the fire that has been smoldering since former President Trump made allegations of voter fraud following his 2020 defeat. last time, the actual evidence of the attacks could this time be used to once again cast doubt on the 2020 outcome.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has been preparing for such attacks. #protect2024 website contains a wealth of protective security content for state and local election officials to improve security hygiene, increase system security, and plan incident response. The Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) is expected to prioritize communications and intelligence sharing between election officials in the United States and other countries, who will likely have of similar groups.
Particularly valuable is the work done by ethical hackers through the Election Security Research Forum and MITER to examine vulnerabilities in hardware and software used by election technology manufacturers. Fully vetted researchers and cybersecurity managers worked together to identify issues and resolve them, preventing any potential for exploitation later in the year.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been used to attempt to disrupt voting infrastructure, including temporary outages during the 2022 United States midterm elections. However, the impact is limit and is unlikely to prevent votes from being cast.
In Bangladesh’s January 2024 elections, an app created by the Election Commission of Bangladesh to provide voters with candidate information and historical data was target by unknown attackers, which slows down application execution. Ahead of the same elections, the telecommunications and media sectors were also heavily targeted by DDoS attacks, seen as an attempt to slow the flow of information to voters.
Finally, we must not exclude the possibility initiated seeking to undermine election security. Insiders could use their access to manipulate or destroy election data, including voter registration data, or gain access to election systems or data. They could also attempt to steal or interfere with election infrastructure equipment or publicly disclose voter information. LPCC DOCUMENT.
A microcosm of cybersecurity and AI issues
The issues affecting election security are a microcosm of cybersecurity and AI issues that cut across all domains: the number of threats and risks that need to be managed and mitigated is growing exponentially, and attackers will always have the upper hand in exploiting technology faster than defenders.
Lessons will be learned and shared from the incidents that affected this year’s elections, but we, as security professionals, must be vigilant and understand how attackers could modify these incidents to threaten businesses, financial markets and critical infrastructure. We should then apply mitigations as much as possible until we can use AI to counter attacks before they damage us.
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