In democratic societies, elections are the mechanism for choosing heads of state and policymakers. There are strong incentives for adversary nations to understand the intentions and preferences of the people and parties that will shape a country’s future path and to reduce uncertainty about likely winners. Mandiant Threat Intelligence regularly observes cyber espionage operations we believe to be seeking election-related information targeting governments, civil society, media, and technology organizations around the globe. We have also seen disruptive and destructive cyber attacks and propaganda campaigns seeking to undermine targeted governments and influence the outcomes of electoral contests.
The 2020 U.S. elections are currently drawing attention to election cyber risks, but 2020 has already hosted dozens of elections worldwide, with more to come. In the Asia-Pacific region these included elections in Taiwan, India, South Korea, and Singapore to name a few, with regional elections scheduled for Indonesia in December.
Given the prevalence of such activity worldwide and Mandiant’s unique visibility into threat actor activity, we believe it is worthwhile to examine trends in adversary targeting of elections in a variety of regional contexts because the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used in one region today may soon be deployed or mimicked in other regions.
