"Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released the following statement:
Since our statement on Friday, the IC has been observing foreign adversaries, particularly Russia, conducting additional influence operations intended to undermine public confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections and stoke divisions among Americans. The IC expects these activities will intensify through election day and in the coming weeks, and that foreign influence narratives will focus on swing states. Russia is the most active threat. Influence actors linked to Russia in particular are manufacturing videos and creating fake articles to undermine the legitimacy of the election, instill fear in voters regarding the election process, and suggest Americans are using violence against each other due to political preferences, judging from information available to the IC. These efforts risk inciting violence, including against election officials. We anticipate Russian actors will release additional manufactured content with these themes through election day and in the days and weeks after polls close.
The IC assesses that Russian influence actors recently posted and amplified an article falsely claiming that U.S. officials across swing states plan to orchestrate election fraud using a range of tactics, such as ballot stuffing and cyberattacks.
Russian influence actors also manufactured and amplified a recent video that falsely depicted an interview with an individual claiming election fraud in Arizona, which involved creating fake overseas ballots and changing voter rolls to favor Vice President Kamala Harris. The Arizona Secretary of State has already refuted the video’s claim as false.
Iran also remains a significant foreign influence threat to U.S. elections. As noted in a prior update, we have assessed that Iran has conducted malicious cyber activities to compromise former President Trump’s campaign. Iranian influence actors may also seek to create fake media content intended to suppress voting or stoke violence, as they have done in past election cycles. We previously reported that Iran also remains determined to seek revenge against select former US officials whom it views as culpable for the death of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) Commander Soleimani in January 2020. It has repeatedly highlighted former President Donald Trump among its priority targets for retribution. In light of continued influence efforts by foreign adversaries and the increasing volume of inauthentic content online, CISA recommends voters seek out information from trusted, official sources, in particular, state and local election officials.
The FBI and CISA encourage campaigns and election infrastructure stakeholders to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to their local Election Crime Coordinators via FBI field office (fbi.gov/fieldoffices), by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324), or online at ic3.gov. Cyber incidents impacting election infrastructure can also be reported to CISA by calling 1-844-Say-CISA (1-844-729-2472), emailing report@cisa.dhs.gov, or reporting online at cisa.gov/report. Election infrastructure stakeholders and the public can find additional resources about how to protect against cyber and physical threats at CISA’s #PROTECT2024 (cisa.gov/protect2024). "
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