WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd December, 2020) Former US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) chief Christopher Krebs said on Wednesday the November election was "fairly quiet" with respect to foreign interference.
"What we saw... was actually a fairly quiet election on the foreign interference landscape," Krebs said in an online interview with the Washington Post.
Krebs noted Iran's role in sending out threatening emails to voters and accused Russia of conducting "a really broad scanning campaign" - gathering details about specific websites in what usually represents a preparatory stage for a hacking attack.
"Out of abundance of transparency and out of abundance of caution, where we did see them plant to voter election systems, election information, not voting system themselves, we felt it was important to disclose that and share that with the American people," Krebs said. "That was a much broader Russian cybercampaign - its scanning campaign. As far as I [know], it's still underway."
Russia has repeatedly denied accusations of meddling in the US political system, saying such actions go contrary to the proclaimed principles and practice of the country's foreign policy.
Krebs said CISA was prepared for a comprehensive set of foreign interference scenarios coming from Russia, Iran, China, North Korea and cybercrime groups and individuals.
"You could call it paranoid," he said. "We had almost four years to prep[are], the last administration had about four months. You can't buy that time. You can't really find any other substitute. We had more visibility. We were looking over there, we were hardening systems here."
Krebs also praised social media platforms for their proactive stance in countering "malign interference." Such stance made adversaries change their behavior and they are not as successful as they used to be, he said.
Krebs was fired by President Donald Trump on November 17, five days after CISA distributed a statement from a group of Federal and state officials who called the 2020 election "the most secure in American history" and said that they found no evidence of votes being tampered with.
Trump has said his election victory was stolen via massive fraud and acts of impropriety, and is seeking redress via recounts and lawsuits in state and federal courts. Trump, his legal team and related lawyers have charged the voting machines from the Dominion Voting Systems - a Canadian firm housing the US election results via a company in Spain and utilizing servers in Germany - and the Smartmatic software were used in the election fraud.
Several US states have said they have found no evidence of widespread election and voter fraud and substantial irregularities.
