In the recent cyber-attacks, voter-related information was stolen from the IL election system, and hackers tried to access Arizona’s system, according to Yahoo News, which first reported on the bulletin.
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V3’s sister site The Inquirer has recently reported on a couple of politically motivated cyber attacks, including one on the Democratic Party that was claimed by infamous hacker Guccifer 2.0.
The FBI is warning state officials to boost their election security in light of evidence that hackers targeted related data systems in IL and Arizona. The hack, which intelligence officials have pinned on Russian operatives, led to the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
According to the Illinois Board of Election general counsel, the state had to shut down its voter registration systems for ten days after the hackers stole the personal data of almost 200,000 voters.
So should we be anxious about the security of the November general election?
“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 said. “By gaining access to these respective websites, hackers gain access to voter registration data, but that isn’t necessarily catastrophic”.
States are responsible for maintaining voter databases, and the information, which can contain dates of birth and home addresses, is attractive to identity thieves.
In Arizona, officials took the voting registration system offline after the Federal Bureau of Investigation alerted the agency that there was a cyber threat to the system.
The FBI provided “eight separate IP addresses” and thinks they may have been linked since the hackers used one address in bothe attacks.
“The prospect of individuals tied to Trump, WikiLeaks and the Russian government coordinating to influence our election raises concerns of the utmost gravity and merits full examination.”, Reid wrote.
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The FBI has issued a nationwide alert about the possible hacking of state voting records, but the Iowa Secretary of State’s office reports there has been no tampering with Iowa voting records. The Democratic National Committee was hacked last month, with embarrassing emails showing coordination between the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign being released publicly.
