US media is reporting that US officials say Russia failed to mount any major operations to interfere with the US elections. According to A Washington Post report
November 17, 2020 Russia failed to mount any major hacking or disinformation operations to interfere in the presidential election, and the Kremlin’s hackers did not even attempt to target elections systems in the way they did in 2016, according to U.S. officials. Officials and analysts said it’s too early to know why, but they point to a variety of possible reasons. Those include cyber and other operations that helped keep the Russians at bay, harder targets at the state and local level, and a political climate in which Americans themselves were the largest purveyors of disinformation, dwarfing Moscow’s efforts to influence the campaign through social media and its propaganda channels. This year, U.S. Cyber Command pursued a new approach to countering Russian hackers who might want to disrupt the election. In a series of operations, the military attacked their systems and fell back at random intervals to keep them off balance. Cybercom also attempted to sabotage Russian hacking tools. The National Security Agency and FBI also exposed a potent class of malware built by Russian military spies who might have used it against the election. Its disclosure meant system operators everywhere could defend against it. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads the NSA and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, said in an Election Day interview that he was “very confident” that actions the NSA and Cybercom have taken over the previous several weeks and months against foreign adversaries had ensured “they’re not going to interfere in our elections.” He did not speak about any particular operation.
Read the rest here.
Earlier this month, the Global Influence Operations Report (GIOR) reported on a Foreign Affairs article warning that the US may be most vulnerable to foreign influence operations after the elections.
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