The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) top cyber official said Tuesday that a report on an increased number of cyberattacks on election infrastructure points to a rise in reporting the attempted hacks and not necessarily a spike in the attacks themselves.
Christoper Krebs, the head of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), said at an event on election security hosted by The Bridge that the report on a DHS assessment “seems to indicate that there’s been an uptick in activity” when it comes to cyberattacks on the election systems.
“It’s not an uptick in activity,” he continued, saying state and local election officials have gotten better at sharing information about cyber activities targeting election systems like voter registration databases since the 2016 election, when that kind of information sharing largely wasn’t happening.
