The FBI is warning state officials to boost their election security in light of evidence that hackers targeted related data systems in two states. The Arizona attack was more limited, involving malicious software that was introduced into its voter registration system but no successful exfiltration of data, a state official said… State election websites in IL and Arizona experienced hack-related shutdowns earlier this summer. However, officials concluded the system was not successfully compromised.
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“This is a big deal”, said Rich Barger, chief intelligence officer for ThreatConnect, a cybersecurity firm, who reviewed the Federal Bureau of Investigation alert at the request of Yahoo News.
“This is the closest we’ve come to tying a recent hack to the Russian government”, one unidentified official said, adding “there is serious concern” Moscow may be seeking to create uncertainty in the election process.
Such potential for contamination has been highlighted in recent weeks by attacks on two major Democratic Party websites – one for the Democratic National Committee and another belonging to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – as well as a reported attack on the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. In the Illinois case, officials were forced to shut down the state’s voter registration system for 10 days in late July, after the hackers managed to download personal data on up to 200,000 state voters, Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections, said in an interview. Given the intrusions at the DNC, DCCC, the Clinton Foundation and other politically connected organizations by Russian Federation this year, it makes sense to be very cautious with state election systems. Tom Carper, D-Del., wrote recently in a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The intrusion in IL led to a week-long shutdown of the voter registration system. An Arizona official said no voter data was removed.
“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 bureau has told IL officials that they’re looking at possible foreign government agencies as well as criminal hackers, Menzel said.
“The very fact that [someone] has rattled the doorknobs, the very fact that the state election commissions are in the cross hairs, gives grounds to the average American voter to wonder: Can they really trust the results?” However, the US government is taking the threat seriously enough that Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson held a conference call with state election officials on August 15 to discuss the need for increased security of election sites and to encourage state election officials to follow the recommendations of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Justice in securing their systems.
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Although the Department of Homeland Security was not aware of specific cyber threats against election-related networks, Johnson urged officials to secure their systems, according to a transcript of the call released by the department.
