The FBI says Russian hackers got into the voter registration system in IL and tried to access Arizona’s, so the agency is warning states to boost election security. 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.
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Menzel says the IL system’s hacker was able to get information that could include driver’s license or portions of Social Security numbers. The cyber attack on IL state election computers started on June 23 and put the records of 200,000 registered votes at risk, according to state election officials. In Arizona, hackers unsuccessfully tried to breach the voter registration system using malicious software, reports said. The alert, labeled as restricted for “NEED TO KNOW recipients”, disclosed that the bureau was investigating cyberintrusions against two state election websites this summer, including one that resulted in the “exfiltration”, or theft, of voter registration data.
According to Illinois State Board of Election officials, the hack in Illinois started in July and may have compromised the last four digits of Social Security numbers, names, birthdays, addresses and drivers’ license numbers of almost 200,000 voters.
“The attackers continued to hit (State Board of Elections) IP addresses 5 times per second until August 12th when attacks abruptly ceased”, according to the update.
United States officials said the Russian government was behind hacks of the Democratic National Party and its congressional counterpart, which the Kremlin has denied.
Those incidents led Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to host a call earlier this month with state election officials to talk about cybersecurity and election infrastructure. The next question now becomes one of why the hackers were trying to break into voter registration databases.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest says that has prompted the administration to debate whether federal officials should step in to ensure the security of the systems.
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.
“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.
It was later determined that Russia-based hackers were behind the security breaches, which compromised the information of as many as 200,000 records of voters in IL. It was not clear if he was aware at the time of the FBI’s investigation into the Arizona and IL intrusions.
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Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee was infliltrated by Russian hackers, who accessed a database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, as well as a plethora of private e-mails. Foreign-based hackers are believed to have breached election databases in Arizona and IL.
