��������

The tense updates come at rapid-fire pace."911 call center is down, hacked and offline.�� �� all over the city."It's an Election Day meltdown as fictitious hackers attack a nameless, large city in an American swing state.The goal: affect the electoral result without ever touching a voting machine."We have to increase fear,�� declared one of the hackers. "Our ultimate goal is to get people to stay home,�� said another as the simulated cyber offensive began.And in the first 30 minutes or so, the plan worked."Attendance extremely low at polls,�� came one readout."Tempers seem to be flaring amongst voters,�� said another.But instead of an apocalyptic Election Day reality, this was "Operation Blackout" �� a cyber drill conducted earlier this month inside the famous John Hancock Tower in Boston.While it may have utilized mock threats, the risks are very real, participants said.Journalists and camera crews from the Hearst Television National Investigative Unit were the only members of the media allowed to watch as the Black Team -- a team of agents and officers from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, several state police agencies and local law enforcement -- squared off against the Red Team, comprised of experts from Harvard University, Boston University, Nichols College and the private firm Cybereason, which pretended to be hackers targeting Election Day.Hackers attack mock Election DayThe Red Team launches the first moves."All lights are green,�� one announces, indicating a hack of the traffic light system to create gridlock on the roads, slowing people down on their way to voting booths.A concurrent attack envisions targeting the city’s closed-circuit camera network to doctor images from the city cameras: “Deep fakes,�� one hacker proposes.And a malicious penetration of the city’s Emergency Alert System allows unfettered access to send false bulletins from official channels. "An active shooter in districts 8 and 5,�� says one hacker. Another warns of “a flood alert on the subway.”But the law enforcement-stacked Black Team quickly counters. "Are we calling in the National Guard?�� asks one member as the traffic gridlock quickly builds.An agent at a federal agency worries, "If we're not in communication with the campaigns, they could be disseminating misinformation unwittingly."Their moves are not without setbacks. "We just lost 60 more officers,�� one participant bemoans, as those officers are diverted for other public safety needs.At another point, a participant summarizes a social media defeat: "So they compromised the mayor's Facebook page, they have compromised his Twitter account."Within a half hour, though, a concerted effort �� built upon lessons learned in previous simulations �� results in a string of victories for the Black Team."911 is back online,�� a relieved participant declares.‘Enormous progress�� for law enforcementSam Curry, the chief security officer at Cybereason, is in charge of the drill, and monitors and moderates the moves of each team. At the conclusion of the 90-minute simulation, he declares a win for Black Team, which successfully outmaneuvered the hackers and preserved the mock election."In the past, I've rarely seen the Black Team emerge well,�� Curry said candidly in an interview after the event. When asked if that meant law enforcement’s victory over the Red Team on this day surprised him, Curry responded, “It did.”“Law enforcement has made enormous progress. We've done similar exercises in the past and we've seen they're often caught flat-footed. �� They didn't have an integrated cyber function before. This time, the folks knew what assets they had on the ground, they knew how to use them, and knew how to develop them and do so fast,�� Curry said.“They knew what was likely to come and they were ready for it. They absolutely got voters to the polls and got an election result that nobody can contest long term.By the end of the day, they had clearly won,�� said Curry.An intelligence officer from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who participated on the Black Team and whose supervisors requested his name not be used in this story called the exercise “very realistic.”“The emphasis on countering influence operations, that's our bread and butter these days. �� Collectively, everybody's paying more attention to this now,�� the Boston-based D.H.S. officer said during a post-event “hot-wash�� briefing with his colleagues. Lessons from 9/11Allison McDowell-Smith, director of the Graduate Counterterrorism Program at Nichols College near Boston, said in an interview that she kept in mind a key lesson from the 9/11 Commission report: a government "failure of imagination."She said they are trying to prevent that from occurring again.“Start brainstorming ideas of what could happen.”Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its long awaited report into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The bipartisan report recommended all voting machines be replaced with ones that leave a paper trail and consider giving states more money for election security �� both steps blocked so far by Republican Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Know of election security vulnerabilities? Send investigative tips to the National Investigative Unit at [email protected].