Russian-based hackers may have been responsible for two recent attempts to breach USA voter registration databases in two states, raising fears Moscow is trying to undermine November’s presidential election, U.S. media said Monday.
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Some of that stolen data includes driver license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, he said.
Until now, countries such as Russian Federation and China have shown little interest in voting systems in the United States.
The FBI is warning elections officials to increase their cybersecurity after voting systems in two states were hacked. Still, Barger said the breach bears some of the same fingerprints as previous Russian attacks, and arriving on the tails of August’s National Security Agency hack, Barger say there’s plenty of cause for concern.
Three weeks ago, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee called on the federal government to examine its efforts to protect election systems and voting machines in the United States against similar attacks.
SEE MORE: Did Russians Hack The DNC?
According to Williams, the hackers managed to gain access to Illinois’ online voter registration system and copied a series of files.
The elections board says any voter who believes he or she is the victim of identity theft should contact the IL attorney general’s identity theft hotline at 866-999-5630. It’s believed that a worker may have inadvertently downloaded a virus which exposed the username and password. Luckily, the Arizona attack didn’t go as well for the hackers.
In July, news broke that Russians were thought to be behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email.
“The more concerning part is the potential to possibly modify someone’s voter records or delete them”, he said.
The bureau would not confirm news of the alert but said in a statement that “in furtherance of public-private partnerships, the FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations”.
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.
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Harry Reid believes that the White House does not expose all the information about recent incidents of cyber attacks against the US Democratic Party.
