By Steve Neavling
A senior FBI official on Thursday warned election workers in the U.S. that Chinese hackers pose a “growing threat” after they targeted political parties prior to the 2022 midterm election, CNN reports.
In a meeting with secretaries of state, Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said Chinese hackers are part of “a sea of things we’re concerned” about.
Kaiser said the hackers’ attempts to target the infrastructure ahead of the 2022 election shows there will be “significant Chinese cyber activity … in the coming year.”
Kaiser also warned that Russia, Iran and cybercriminals also pose a threat.
“We don’t have any intelligence that Russia is looking to target state and local or election systems more directly than before,” she said. “But we’re certainly aware of … the possibility and have a very low threshold for sharing that information.”
In October, the FBI warned that Chinese hackers were scouring the headquarters of state political parties in search of vulnerable systems to exploit ahead of the midterms.
