CISA, FBI warn of election phishing threats
CISA and FBI warn election and campaign officials of phishing and smishing campaigns targeting credentials ahead of 2026 U.S. midterms.
Sourcecisa.gov — open the original
What to check
- Applies to
- Not tied to a specific actor, malware or CVE, only to the sectors it covers, so it may be general reporting. Check the source before acting on it. Whether it concerns you is not assessed.
CISA and the FBI issued a Public Service Announcement warning election officials, campaign staff, and political organizations about ongoing cyber threats ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections. The advisory highlights that threat actors are using increasingly sophisticated phishing and smishing (SMS phishing) campaigns, including convincing emails, text messages, and even audio/video content, to steal login credentials and sensitive information or to install malware on targeted devices.
The PSA notes that election officials, candidates, and political organizations are attractive targets due to their access to voter registration data, communications with current government officials, and sensitive campaign strategy information. No specific threat actor, malware family, or technical indicators are disclosed in this advisory; it is a general awareness and best-practices bulletin rather than an incident report or detailed technical analysis.
Defenders in the elections and political sector should treat this as a reminder to reinforce phishing and smishing awareness training, enable multi-factor authentication, and monitor for suspicious login attempts or messages impersonating election officials or campaign organizations. CISA and FBI urge recipients to review the full PSA and follow recommended cybersecurity hygiene practices.
Source reporting: https://www.cisa.gov/resources-tools/resources/cyber-threat-actors-use-variety-techniques-target-election-and-campaign-officials
Free public brief. Slack alerts on the vendors you run come with the paid plans, and a new account gets three days of them, no card.
What this brief leaves out
This page is the free tier: the write-up, the severity, the names. The paid plans add the security research and news reporting the free tier leaves out.
It sits in a corpus of 16,445 reports from 149 sources, 666 of them written in the last seven days, and it grows through the day.
A new account starts with three days of all of it, no card, then keeps the government and CERT reporting free. Slack alerts are a paid-plan feature: name the vendors you run and Slack hears about the reports that touch them, not the rest of the week's. Nothing is charged unless you subscribe.
Create a free account What it costs