Russian hackers breached a state election network in Arizona, a state official said Monday night.
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While Comey didn’t cite any specific country or group, US officials and cybersecurity specialists have raised the possibility that foreign hackers – particularly those linked to the Russian government – might try to hack into voting systems, possibly to meddle with USA elections this November. “All electronic voting systems must have a paper trail that can be audited”.
The bulletin does not identify the states, but sources familiar with the document say it refers to the targeting by suspected foreign hackers of voter registration databases in Arizona and IL. In the Illinois case, officials were forced to shut down the state’s voter registration system for 10 days in late July, after the hackers managed to download personal data on up to 200,000 state voters, Ken Menzel, the general counsel of the Illinois Board of Elections, said in an interview.
“I have recently become concerned that the threat of the Russian government tampering in our presidential election is more extensive than widely known and may include the intent to falsify official election results”, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Comey in an August 27 letter.
“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected”, the FBI wrote in a flash alert.
Information potentially at risk from voter databases could be used for ID theft.
The FBI alert, first reported by Yahoo News, did not mention Russian Federation. Clinton’s campaign suggested the leak was the work of Russian hackers. The Republican presidential nominee has said that Clinton stands to benefit from a “rigged” system on November 8 and that the only way he could lose the swing state of Pennsylvania is through fraud, despite multiple polls of Pennsylvania voters that show him trailing Clinton.
Johnson said the agency was not aware of “specific or credible cyber security threats” to the election at the time.
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While there’s no danger is using technology to count votes, there’s more of a danger for voting systems that allow votes to be cast electronically, said Alfredo Ortega, of Avast.
