US Cyber Command Operations During the 2022 Midterm Elections
The head of both US Cyber Command and the NSA, Gen. Paul Nakasone, broadly discussed that first organization’s offensive cyber operations during the runup to the 2022 midterm elections. He didn’t name names, of course:
We did conduct operations persistently to make sure that our foreign adversaries couldn’t utilize infrastructure to impact us,” said Nakasone. “We understood how foreign adversaries utilize infrastructure throughout the world. We had that mapped pretty well. And we wanted to make sure that we took it down at key times.”
Nakasone noted that Cybercom’s national mission force, aided by NSA, followed a “campaign plan” to deprive the hackers of their tools and networks. “Rest assured,” he said. “We were doing operations well before the midterms began, and we were doing operations likely on the day of the midterms.” And they continued until the elections were certified, he said.
We know Cybercom did similar things in 2018 and 2020, and presumably will again in two years.
Winter • January 25, 2023 7:15 AM
This reminds me of the Y2K “problem”. Then, and now, many people did not believe Y2K was a thing. And when nothing happened, they all claimed “See, nothing happened, this was all a hoax for doing $EVIL”. However, I have seen in person that people had to work hard to avoid it’s problems.
Now, with elections, it is the same, except now smooth running elections are seen as evidence for $THEM subverting (stealing) the elections.
No amount of work done to secure the elections will ever convince those who do not want to be convinced.
However, not naming names prevents the rest of the public from learning who it is that is threatening us.