- [Speaker one] It's election day in an American town,
but everything is going wrong.
There's a bomb threat at the local post office,
the 911 call center has been hacked and now offline,
traffic lights in the city are malfunctioning
and fake stories about COVID outbreaks
among poll workers are circulating all over the internet.
The town is Adversaria,
which thankfully doesn't actually exist
but it's the main character in a simulation organized
by the information security company
Cybereason called Operation Blackout.
- [Speaker two] I think the attention for the most part
has been by security professionals
on how do you hack the electoral roles?
How do you hack the machinery of voting?
That's important.
It's not all there is.
- [Speaker three] We thought
it was a very narrow minded view
of the election process
but the entire process was much more vulnerable.
- [Speaker two] The purpose behind Operation Blackout
is to game it out
and you simulate.
And so we say let's think about the unthinkable
so that we're ready.
- [Speaker four] It's not a zero sum game.
It's possible that you both could do very well with this.
And, or do very poorly
as we've seen in the past in some instances.
- [Speaker two] Elections happen at a local level.
They happen in cities and at the state level.
And what we wanna make sure is that the folks
who are gonna be administering that.
Volunteers, local law enforcement, state
and city governments,
that they are aware of what might happen
and that they're as prepared as can be.
- [Speaker three] In order to really shift the focus
on election security from the very technical question
of how do you secure the voting machines
to a much broader question
of how do you secure the voting process.
So the way we envisioned it was
let's create a tabletop simulation.
- [Speaker one] For the simulation,
there's a red, blue and white team.
Jonathan leads the red team
which takes on the hacker role
and comes up with ways to undermine the election.
The blue team is composed of the people
who would actually be responding to these threats
in real time.
We can't reveal who they are for security purposes,
but the team includes federal, state
and local law enforcement and other local officials.
And Sam is the white team.
He sits between the red and the blue
and coordinates the moves.
- [Speaker four] Let's give them a little hint.
FBI reports, dark web showing interest
in private sector delivery services.
- [Speaker one] This stimulation usually happens in person
but this year they pandemic has relegated the event to Zoom.
- [Speaker three] In one of the simulations,
we did videos of the candidates really doing things
that would play very wrong with their base,
using deep fake technology.
- [Speaker five] Let's replace this one
with a deep fake concession speech.
- [Speaker Three] We looked at creating a bomb threat
to dramatically change traffic patterns.
If you spend three hours on the way back home
you're not gonna go and then go out and vote again.
You'll think to yourself,
"My vote doesn't really matter.
"I'll just stay home today."
- [Speaker two] The blue team
have a completely different objective.
It's not just the opposite.
It's about public safety.
They are law enforcement for the most part
but there are things they can do to change the game
and to make it so that they can also protect democracy.
- [Speaker Three] The law enforcement's first
and foremost priority is public safety.
Your number one concern is, how do I keep people safe?
Then only your second priority is, how do I keep the integrity
of the process?
- [Speaker six] The post office has suffered a bomb threat.
- [Speaker seven] There's an anthrax scare.
- [Speaker eight] He's doing a physical attack
on the vote sorting machinery.
- [Speaker nine] The president
plans to discount mail in votes.
- [Speaker ten] Well, here's what I'm saying is
tell citizens to expect
that you will not be able to finalize results
for several days
regardless of what any particular candidate says.
This is our last term,
we'll see what happens.
- [Speaker two] In a moment when something bad happens
you have a crisis,
you get an adrenaline response,
it's fight or flight
and that's a poor time to be making decisions.
So here's a chance for people to sit down around a table
in a fun, if tense setting
and eventually in a simulation,
the walls fade out
and you feel like you're in it.
So let's give him that chance
and let's give him a chance to get to know each other.
- [Speaker three] We're so used to individuals
to segment the problem
into discrete domains.
We don't see how they interrelate.
As security researchers,
we are constantly living in those connections.
So, what are the non-obvious links
we're missing is actually something
that can be used to protect the same system.
- [Speaker one] The reality is we can't forecast
what's going to happen
on election day
and that's really the point of the simulation
to get the people running our elections
to expect the unexpected
and react to threats in a productive way,
all in an effort to preserve our democracy.
- [Speaker Four] So the end result here
I have to say, Danny, you and the blue team's safety
first mission was accomplished.
And I think smart moves at the end really made a difference.
- [Speaker two] Hopefully the day of they know who to call
and they know what to do and they're like,
"Hey, we gamed this out."
Such that by the time it arrives it's a reflex
because no one has seen an election
like we expect the 2020 presidential election to be.
The stakes are high for 2020
and frankly, this is the game to win.
- [Speaker] Thanks for watching.
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