Jason Hill - Asssessing Election Infrastructure

In this informative briefing at the DEF CON 27 Voting Village, Jason Hill and Genevieve Marquart from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA / DHS) detail the specialized election infrastructure assessment services offered by the National Cybersecurity Assessments and Technical Services (NCATS) team. At 04:00, they provide an overview of nine no-cost cybersecurity services available to state, county, and municipal election officials, ranging from external vulnerability scanning to in-depth Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (RVA).

The speakers discuss state-mandated security directives at 08:00, showing how jurisdictions are proactively leveraging federal technical support ahead of the 2020 general election. At 12:00, Jason explains the methodology behind external penetration testing on election networks, where operators test whether compromised low-privilege accounts can escalate privileges or pivot laterally into sensitive voter registration databases.

At 16:00, Genevieve explains the formal onboarding process for local election directors seeking DHS assistance. They highlight federal initiatives to migrate municipal election sites to secure .gov domains at 20:00, enhancing resilience against phishing and domain spoofing. They conclude at 24:00 by describing CISA's proactive threat hunting and incident response teams, which assist election administrators in rapid containment and digital forensics in the event of an active intrusion. (AI summary — Gemini Flash)