The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has found evidence two U.S. state election databases were breached recently by people believed to be foreign hackers, prompting the law enforcement agency to urge state election officials to enhance their computer security systems.
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Menzel says the board is not concerned about the integrity of the voting system and does not expect the breach to impact the upcoming general election. The alert said that the FBI was investigating the intrusions into two states’ election websites whereby one resulted in the “exfiltration” or theft of voter registration data.
“We can simultaneously have confidence in our system and prepare appropriately for possible attacks”, said Goodman.
“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected”, the alert reads, as shared by Yahoo.
The FBI has found evidence that two state election databases were infiltrated this summer by foreign hackers, according to a Yahoo News report Monday.
Yahoo! published a copy of alert, dated August 18, 2016; it’s embedded below.
But, Barger said, “the very fact that [someone] has rattled the doorknobs, the very fact that the state election commissions are in the crosshairs gives grounds to the average American voter to wonder-can they really trust the results?”
An FBI spokeswoman would not comment on the alerts but said the agency “routinely advises” on “various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations”.
Federal officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility that hackers, particularly those working for Russian Federation or another country, could breach US elections systems and wreak havoc on the November presidential election.
The breaches are causing concern among election officials because of the voter personal information that could have been stolen, not because of any fear that an election could be stolen, law enforcement officials say.
The incidents prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to hold a conference call with state election officials earlier this month.
Only five states – New Jersey, Delaware, Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana – use electronic voting machines without a paper trail, according to a database maintained by Verified Voting, a non-profit organization that aims to improve vote accuracy and transparency.
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The state shut down the system for nine days beginning in late June, after the discovery of malware on an election official’s computer.
