Yahoo! News is reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has issued an alert that voter databases in two states, Arizona and IL, were targeted by foreign hackers for now unknown reasons.
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According to its report, earlier this month, the FBI’s Cyber Division issued an alert that warned: “Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems”.
And in July, the Illinois Voter Registration System suffered a cyber intrusion in which hackers were able to retrieve a number of voter records, according to a message from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
The hack in IL was said to be more severe. “We know how they got into our system, and we fixed that issue and we’ve looked at similar vulnerabilities to other parts of the site and made sure we didn’t have an opening of the type that was exploited here”, said Ken Menzel, general counsel, Illinois Board of Elections.
Menzel also said that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents confirmed to him in a recent briefing that the attacks were believed to be carried out by foreign hackers.
The FBI alert obtained by Yahoo News lists eight IP addresses the bureau thinks were used in the IL and Arizona attacks, including one used in both. Under state law, notification is required only if the data included information that is not publicly available, such as Social Security or driver’s license numbers.
On Monday, Arizona’s state government said that its voting system had briefly been taken offline in June due to an attack similar to what MS-ISAC found.
And US officials say Russian intelligence agencies were behind recent hacks into Democratic Party organizations, including the campaign of its White House candidate Hillary Clinton.
“We see attacks literally every day, but it’s not necessarily against voter registration information”, he said.
The FBI’s Cyber Division sent out an alert this month after IL and Arizona reported breaches.
Logan emphasized the computer system that scans and counts votes is separate from the voter registration database and is not connected to the Internet or any other outside computers, insulating the system from hackers.
The Illinois Board of Elections has confirmed there was a breach in the Illinois voter registration system. “This data is provided in order to help cyber security professionals and system administrators to guard against the persistent malicious actions of cyber criminals”.
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IL was the victim of a voter database hack in July and was forced to shut down its systems for 10 days. Meanwhile, states across the nation are scrambling to ensure that their systems are secure. “This certainly should be concerning to the common American voter”. At the time, Johnson said they weren’t aware of a specific or credible cybersecurity threat.
