Why Election Day Could Be a ‘Super Bowl’ for Hackers

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[00:00:18] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, November 5th. I'm Cordelia James for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:00:25] The U.S. semiconductor industry is digging deeper to cut China out of supply chains, targeting chip toolmakers.

[00:00:34] We'll hear why finding alternatives to Chinese suppliers isn't always easy.

[00:00:39] And then, it's Election Day. Americans across the country are casting their ballots to select the next president of the United States.

[00:00:48] It's also what one cybersecurity expert has called a Super Bowl for cybercriminals.

[00:00:54] WSJ reporter Bel Lin tells us how cybercriminals are attempting to hack election networks and how voters can protect themselves.

[00:01:06] But first, pressure from officials in Washington is causing some of the world's biggest semiconductor manufacturers to cut ties with China.

[00:01:15] Now, chip toolmakers are telling suppliers that they need to find alternatives to certain components obtained from China or risk losing their vendor status.

[00:01:24] This includes two Silicon Valley companies, Applied Materials and Lam Research, which make equipment used in chip production.

[00:01:33] WSJ reporter Asa Fitch joins us now with more.

[00:01:37] Asa, remind us, why is the U.S. government pressuring these companies to cut ties with China?

[00:01:42] So, the U.S. has been, for a long time, has been trying to clamp down on China's ability to make the most advanced chips.

[00:01:49] Because the idea is that if China can make the most advanced chips, they can put those chips in AI systems, in the military equipment, in all kinds of other applications that the U.S. doesn't like.

[00:01:59] So, there are a couple ways to do that.

[00:02:02] You can restrict the export of advanced chips to China.

[00:02:05] You can also try to prevent China from being able to make these chips.

[00:02:09] And so, one way to prevent that is to put controls on the machinery that goes into making chips.

[00:02:16] And two companies that are two of the largest in the world in this business of supplying that machinery are called Applied Materials and Lam Research.

[00:02:25] And we should note that Lam Research said it adheres to U.S. export controls for companies in the chip manufacturing supply chain.

[00:02:33] And Applied Materials said it identifies alternative sources for components to make sure they are available.

[00:02:39] What exactly are officials telling these companies to do?

[00:02:42] The main factor is that the U.S. government has told those companies that they have until the end of next year to vet their own supply chains and figure out how to either get rid of many companies that supply them who are headquartered in China or seek a license from the government to continue to use those companies in their supply chain.

[00:03:10] So, there's an exercise going on now where these companies are trying to find the companies that would require a license and not use them any more effectively, if at all possible.

[00:03:20] What are some of the repercussions of removing China from this process?

[00:03:25] The chip industry has been a global industry for a very long time.

[00:03:29] It's a major exercise to try to find alternatives.

[00:03:33] I mean, in some cases, it's easy because there are people who do the same things all around the world.

[00:03:38] In other cases, it's quite hard.

[00:03:39] And sometimes that's not because the Chinese headquarter supplier is supplying some advanced thing that nobody else can make.

[00:03:45] Sometimes it's actually the opposite.

[00:03:46] The Chinese supplier might make some printed circuit board or some specialty item within a tool that just isn't made in other places because it's not really economical to make it in other places.

[00:03:57] You know, the cost of labor is lower in China where the equipment you need to make that unsophisticated part is not easily available in other places.

[00:04:05] And so what do we know about China's response to all of this?

[00:04:09] China has been responding to U.S. export controls by imposing some controls of its own.

[00:04:15] For example, on certain minerals like gallium, you know, some obscure minerals that you probably never heard of that are nonetheless pretty important in semiconductor manufacturing.

[00:04:26] They've taken some other moves.

[00:04:28] They've taken some other moves.

[00:04:28] But broadly speaking, if you ask people in the industry, China's ability to respond is limited, partly by the fact that China needs a lot of these chips that come from American companies to do a lot of basic stuff.

[00:04:40] China does have a lot of domestic chip production.

[00:04:42] But most people in the industry would say not enough to supply all of their own needs.

[00:04:48] The U.S. sort of, people would say, has the upper hand in this equation of, you know, supplying the Chinese market, but also not facing a full-throated retaliation from China in terms of export controls.

[00:04:59] That was our reporter, Asa Fitch.

[00:05:01] Coming up, why one former Defense Department intelligence analyst called the presidential election a cybercriminals Super Bowl.

[00:05:10] That's after the break.

[00:05:22] Crashing websites, fishy emails.

[00:05:25] Security experts say the U.S. presidential election is prime time for cybercriminals to exploit software vulnerabilities

[00:05:32] and disperse disinformation as millions of Americans head to the polls today.

[00:05:38] WSJ reporter Belle Lin joins us with more.

[00:05:41] Belle, why is the presidential election a prime target for cybercriminals?

[00:05:46] Cybercriminals are really financially motivated individuals.

[00:05:50] And so that means that they are looking to score a kind of jackpot.

[00:05:55] So that could be from their sort of typical tactics of trying to break into corporate email accounts, stealing or holding up ransom for critical infrastructure.

[00:06:04] But also in this case, the election is sort of a prime target for them because there is just as much sort of valuable data to be held up for ransom or sold on the dark web.

[00:06:13] So when we talk about cybercriminals, we're usually referring to people with financial motivations, but sometimes also ideological.

[00:06:20] So in the case of the presidential election, they could be individuals who are trying to further some social or political cause.

[00:06:26] I talked to a former defense intelligence analyst who dubbed the election a sort of Super Bowl for cybercriminals because it's an incredibly serious and high profile event,

[00:06:37] not just for our nation, but also for cyber attackers who see it as an opportunity to really make a name for themselves.

[00:06:44] You wrote about a few different tactics cybercriminals are using to disrupt the election.

[00:06:50] Including using ransomware, which actually holds organization systems and data hostage.

[00:06:55] How does this work exactly?

[00:06:57] A lot of businesses will have encountered a ransomware threat.

[00:07:01] And it usually comes through via a phishing email where an employee or perhaps an elections official is tricked into clicking this malicious link that downloads this malware.

[00:07:12] And then that enables the attacker to basically have control or almost complete access in some cases to either a business's network or an election official's network and systems.

[00:07:23] So something really important to point out here is that these aren't the voting machines themselves, which are not connected to the Internet.

[00:07:30] These are the networks and the email accounts of the elections officials' offices.

[00:07:34] So it could be like a local or state elections network that could be severely disrupted by a ransomware attack.

[00:07:42] What's the worst that can happen if these attempts are successful?

[00:07:46] The thing is, we do have evidence in which these attacks have been successful.

[00:07:50] In the 2020 and 2023 timeframe, ransomware actors, these cybercriminals, have actually prevented or delayed voting processes.

[00:07:59] So that's the realm of the election disruption that could occur.

[00:08:03] But, you know, it's kind of hard to say because cybercriminals are getting savvier just as the good guys are getting better at keeping them out.

[00:08:11] But the cybersecurity infrastructure and security agency, CISA, has strongly been sending the message that the outcome of the election will not be affected.

[00:08:20] How common is all of this?

[00:08:23] There's some reporting from the Department of Homeland Security that indicates that only about 3% of cyberattacks that were reported to the agency were successful.

[00:08:35] So something else that's kind of new right now, another new variable shaking up this year's election, generative AI.

[00:08:42] How might cybercriminals use this to affect systems?

[00:08:45] This is the first presidential election that the country has been through or is going through in which generative AI, chat GPT-like tools are in anyone's hands.

[00:08:55] And so cyber officials and authorities have been really raising the alarm for quite some time that these defakes, which we haven't seen as much evidence of really being quite so prominent, but they are out there.

[00:09:06] There's evidence that attackers or sort of criminals have defaked President Biden's voice.

[00:09:11] So the threat is there, but we're just trying to figure out how exactly it'll manifest.

[00:09:16] The overall takeaway, though, that CISA and other authorities are saying is that the election outcome will not be affected, though voters might be influenced.

[00:09:24] That's sort of the bigger question.

[00:09:26] What kinds of safeguards are in place to protect voters' ballots?

[00:09:30] So there are plenty of layers of safeguards, CISA tells us, that are in place to protect the integrity and the security of the vote.

[00:09:37] So not only are these voting machines that we talked about not connected to the Internet, which makes them much, much more difficult to be hacked, but some 98% of votes are actually cast using paper ballots.

[00:09:49] And 100% of paper ballots are being used in battleground states as well.

[00:09:54] And then on top of that, over the past several years, CISA and local elections officials have added even more safeguards.

[00:10:02] They've added physical access controls to polling places.

[00:10:05] They've added pre-election equipment testing and audits to post-election votes.

[00:10:11] So is there anything that voters can do to protect themselves?

[00:10:14] Voters should definitely be aware, first and foremost, that their votes will be counted, that their votes will not be tampered with,

[00:10:22] that voting machines are very secure. That's the message that CISA is sending to the electorate.

[00:10:27] They're encouraging voters to be a little bit more skeptical of what they see on the Internet and what they read.

[00:10:31] And the sort of like basic layer of trust that it seems like the public had with the messages that we were getting from the Internet and from social media,

[00:10:39] that's already sort of started to wear away in the prior presidential election.

[00:10:42] So perhaps the electorate is a little bit more aware of attempts to trick them.

[00:10:47] That's the hope.

[00:10:48] That was our reporter, Belle Lin.

[00:10:51] And that's it for Tech News Briefing.

[00:10:53] Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop.

[00:10:58] I'm Cordelia James for The Wall Street Journal.

[00:11:01] We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute.

[00:11:04] Thanks for listening.