ABU DHABI — The latest revelation by Microsoft about disrupting a botnet, which could potentially threaten the US elections, has raised alarms on cyberattacks on the upcoming presidential election.

However, officials and experts have reassured that safeguards are in place to protect the election system from cyberattacks and technical problems.

"Today, we took action to disrupt a botnet called Trickbot, one of the world’s most infamous botnets and prolific distributors of ransomware. As the United States Government and independent experts have warned, ransomware is one of the largest threats to the upcoming election," Microsoft revealed in a blogpost published on Monday.

Botnet is a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge.

Substantial progress in protection measures

However, an expert said the US election system has adequate safeguards to prevent any potential cyberattacks, which were further stepped up after a previous warning issued by Microsoft on 10th September.

"During the last few months, there has been substantial progress made to implement the kind of backup and security features that should allow all voters to cast ballots, which will be counted even in the event of a successful cyberattack or other unforeseen system failure," said David Levine, Elections Integrity Fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, ASD, a bipartisan initiative housed at the German Marshall Fund of the US.

The ASD brings together experts on disinformation, malign finance, emerging technologies, elections integrity, economic coercion and cybersecurity.

Record of all votes

Explaining the existing safeguards, Levine said an important step is to ensure that there will be a paper record of nearly every vote for 2020.

The director for the Cyber Division of the Department of Homeland Security recently estimated that 92 percent of voters will vote on paper ballots that can be audited, the expert told journalists participating in a virtual reporting tour of the election process, organised by the US Department of State.

A select group of more than 200 journalists from media outlets across the globe, including Emirates News Agency, WAM, is attending the eight-week long virtual tour.

Voting in crucial states

The Elections Integrity Fellow at the ASD continued to say that even in jurisdictions that use paperless machines, more voters will be voting on a paper ballot because of an increased demand for mail in voting, prompted by the coronavirus.

"It is also worth noting that voters that are not using paperless voting machines are not in what we call tipping points states or any of the crucial states," Levine pointed out.

"And when I say tipping point states, I'm talking about states that would give a winning presidential candidate, a majority of the electoral votes, or frankly, I'm also talking about those states that may play a role in the outcome with regards to control of the US Senate," he explained.

"Our election system is also more resilient," the expert stressed.

Record number of vote by mail

There will be a record number of people that vote by mail this election.

A large number of people are expected to vote in person and election officials have taken a number of steps to ensure that in-person voting will not be stopped even in the event of cyber-attacks, election technology malfunctions, or other disruptions, Levine explained.

"One example is that there's more early in-person voting than there has ever been. And that's really important because if there is more voting spread over more days, and locations, and more times, that helps ensure that an attack against or failure in the infrastructure on any particular day is less likely to disenfranchise large numbers of voters," he said.

"If there's a problem during early voting, voters might be able to opt to come back later, and of course, the more folks who vote early, the fewer voters that might be affected or would be effected by an Election Day disruption," the expert noted.

Possible delay in final results

Levine forewarned that there would be delay in announcing the final results, which could be exploited by rogue elements to spread disinformation.

State and local officials typically require several days to weeks to certify election final results in order to ensure that every legally cast vote is accurately counted.

"The increased use of mail ballots due to COVID-19 protocols, coronavirus pandemic, could leave officials with incomplete results on election night and that's okay. Certainly it isn't evidence of nefarious conduct," he clarified.

However, foreign actors could exploit the time required to certify and announce election results by sharing information that includes reports of voter suppression, cyber-attacks, targeting election infrastructure, election fraud, and other problems with the intent to convince the public of the election legitimacy or illegitimacy, warned Levine.

The US Presidential election will be held ‪on 3rd November‬. The Republican president Donald Trump, is running for re-election against Democrat and former Vice President Joe Biden. — WAM