The FBI issued an alert to local election officials across the USA earlier this month advising them to ramp up cyber security measures after uncovering evidence that hackers breached two state election networks this summer, Yahoo News reported Monday morning.
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Those states were not identified, but source told Yahoo News that voter registration databases in Arizona and IL were recently targeted by foreign hackers.
According to The Arizona Republic, security concerns stemming from the hack prompted the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office to shut down parts of its website dealing with candidates running with public financing and voter registration.
American intelligence officials say hackers based in Russian Federation are to blame for two recent attempts to breach voter registration databases in a USA state.
While state officials claim there was no harm done, cyber security experts say more fortification is needed. “We are in the process of determining the exact number of voter records and specific names of all individuals affected”, said the official. After being alerted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Arizona Department of Administration reportedly took their voting registration offline and were able to limit the data stolen.
Last week Senate minority leader Harry Reid asked the FBI to investigate evidence suggesting Russia may be trying to manipulate voting results in November, expressing concern about a “direct connection” between Republican candidate Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
Clapper said in July that he was “taken aback a bit by. the hyperventilation over” the hack of the DNC, adding sarcastically, “I’m shocked somebody did some hacking”.
One state’s election board was compromised in June, according to the bulletin, while the unsuccessful attempt on another state’s election system was made in August. Certain methods used in the hack overlap with previous attacks linked to Russian Federation, and at least one IP address used in the hack had surfaced previously in cybercrime forums. “The FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations”.
“This data is provided in order to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals”, the statement read.
The Arizona attack was more limited and involved introducing malicious software into the voter registration system, Yahoo News quoted a state official as saying.
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The FBI bulletin does not attribute the two attacks to any particular group, although Yahoo News traces a few pieces of evidence that link the attack to Russian Federation.
