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.
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The online voter registration portal was restored late last month and the board has added further encryption and taken other steps to enhance security, officials said.
The FBI’s Cyber Division has issued a warning that foreign hackers are targeting – and perhaps even penetrating – state election and voter registration systems in the US.
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.
The Illinois State Board of Elections announced Wednesday that 700 voter records were viewed by hackers – with another 86,000 “strongly suspected” of being viewed – during a cyber-attack of the voter database earlier this summer.
But of most concern, of course, are the separate computer systems that count and report actual votes.
The letter tells FBI Director James Comey that the American people need to know if any actions taken by Trump on behalf of Russian interests were related to the attacks against the Democratic Party’s groups.
As for which states’ information was compromised, signs are pointing to IL and Arizona. Not all outdated information has been purged, according to Menzel, so some of those records likely include information for deceased voters or those who have subsequently moved.
The two letters follow a spate of hacking attacks targeting United States political databases, including some that officials and cyber security experts have blamed on hackers working for the Russian government.
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on August 30 that such reports were “absolutely unfounded” and “unsubstantiated”, and that “as a whole, we don’t consider it necessary to pay attention to this in any way”.
According to The Washington Post, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is now under alert after a series of suspected foreign hacks of state election computer systems and websites was reported. The warning lists several suspicious IP addresses and claims that hackers used “penetration testing” software, including Acunetix, SQLMap, and DirBuster, in an attempt to gain access to election systems.
Officials said the IL hack in July was the first successful breach of a state voter registration database, according to the Washington Post.
“This is the closest we’ve come to tying a recent hack to the Russian government”, the official said.
Stewart said whether there is time to secure the nation’s entire elections system before November “is a great question”.
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The hack of the DNC resulted in WikiLeaks publishing embarrassing emails that showed to DNC officials plotting against Democratic presidential candidate Sen.
