Russians Who Pose Election Threat Have Hacked Nuclear Plants and Power Grid

[foo_fighter999]

14. Make no mistake about it. The Russian hacker groups are very, VERY sophisticated.

I have no doubt that they have been crawling around our networks gunning for our election systems for some time now. I suspect that by this time, they have their tools in place and are just waiting for the go-ahead to trigger them. Note: they may not get the green light to do so but I guess that will be up to Putin. From the article:

Likewise, the experts said, if former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, is elected, Russia may try to use its foothold in the systems to weaken or delegitimize him, or it may hold back so as not to provoke the new administration.

“By doing this more quietly, you give yourself more options,” Spaulding said.

Quietly crawling around the network without calling attention to yourself while you locate your targets and find a way to infiltrate them is SOP for Russian (and other nation-state) hacker groups. While I'm fairly confident that (most) local election officials as well as the national intelligence agencies are well aware of the threat these groups pose to our election systems and have taken steps to secure them, these types of attacks are also very hard to defend against as all it takes is one weak link in the chain for the adversary to gain access. Add in the fact that we are behind the curve when it comes to cyber security and that leaves us vulnerable to attacks, not just during an election cycle but every single day. That said, I'm pretty sure that Joe is aware of this and will take steps to improve our cyber security posture once he is in office.