Hackers have breached databases for voter registration systems in IL and Arizona, according to state election and law enforcement officials. As a result, Reagan shut down the state’s voter registration system for almost a week.
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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.
“All states should begin with the perspective that they may have already suffer a compromise by some actor”, Kellerman said.
Some experts, along with Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign, believe that Russian Federation was behind the embarrassing email hack of the Democratic National Committee right before its national convention last month. That hack produced embarrassing emails that led to the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and sowed dissension on the eve of Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the party’s presidential candidate.
The Russian campaign is also sparking intense anxiety about the security of this year’s elections. State election officials realized in July the system had been breached.
But some cyber experts said the FBI’s alert, first revealed by Yahoo News on Monday, could be a sign that investigators are anxious that foreign actors are attempting a wide-scale digital onslaught. He posted that username and password online and someone used it to try to get into Arizona’s voter registration file but was unsuccessful.
The FBI hasn’t named the two states, but it described a “compromise” of one elections board website and “attempted intrusion activities” in another state’s system.
In the two attempts, data from as many as 200,000 voter records in the USA state of IL was stolen, the officials told NBC News.
State officials alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he said, and the Department of Homeland Security also was involved.
The alert comes in the wake of a Russian hacker gaining login access to Arizona election systems, the Wall Street Journal reported.
It’s also possible to visit Google’s How Do I Vote page to see what options are available in a given state or jurisdiction.
Several swing states, including Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia, are struggling to rid their polling stations of insecure touch-screen systems. But experts said that if a foreign government gained the ability to tamper with voter data – for instance by deleting registration records – such a hack could cast doubt on the legitimacy of USA elections. “We’re very confident nothing was added, deleted or altered”.
James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has told Congress that manipulation or deletion of data is the next big cyberthreat – “the next push on the envelope”.
It has offered to help states increase security of their systems, but states have rebuffed federal help and largely believe their systems are secure.
“When you have voters marking a physical ballot, it’s pretty easy to check – and it’s obvious what’s being counted”, Smith said.
But of most concern, of course, are the separate computer systems that count and report actual votes.
“You’re seeing more and more manifestations of information warfare via cyber means to destabilize American public opinion, and undermine the trust and confidence in American institutions, such as the electoral system”, Tom Kellerman, Strategic Cyber Ventures CEO, said. Other states, such as Georgia and New Jersey, still use them at every polling station.
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Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson spoke with state election officials “about security standards and how to prevent cyberattacks from impacting the voting process”.
