The Big Picture:

Trump’s behavior, however, has at times concerned the Russians, leading them to revise their hacking and disinformation strategy. For example, when Trump launched into an inexplicable attack on the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who died in combat, the Kremlin assumed the Republican nominee was showing himself psychologically unfit to be president and would be forced by his party to withdraw from the race. As a result, Moscow put its hacking campaign temporarily on hold, ending the distribution of documents until Trump stabilized, both personally and in the polls, according to reports.

“A senior U.S. intelligence official assured that cybersecurity and the Russian government's attempts to interfere in the 2016 election have been briefed to, and discussed extensively with, both parties' candidates.... ‘To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation,’ said the official. ‘The intelligence community has walked a very thin line in not taking sides, but both candidates have all the information they need to be crystal clear.’”

FBI issued an unprecedented warning to state election officials urging them to be on the lookout for intrusions into their election systems and to take steps to upgrade security measures across the voting process, including voter registration, voter rolls and election-related websites. The confidential “flash” alert said investigators had detected attempts to penetrate election systems in several states.

...attackers would probe election offices in advance to find ways to break into computers. Closer to election, when it was clear from polling which states would have close margins, the attackers might spread malware into machines in some of these states, rigging machines to shift a few % of the vote to favor desired candidate. This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during preelection tests, do its dirty business during election, then erase itself when polls close. A skilled attacker’s work might leave no visible signs though the country might be surprised when results in several close states were off from preelection polls.

The vendor hack in Florida prompted the FBI last week to coordinate an emergency call with county election supervisors who operate the election system...

... machine targeted by Cylance is used by some voting precincts in potential presidential swing states Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Nevada, and Wisconsin.