State Election Systems Hacked

The alert did not name the states involved, but an anonymous source confirmed to Yahoo that the alert was related to attacks on databases in Arizona and IL.

“T$3 he FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations”, the FBI told Fox News in a written statement.

Officials have raised concern over election systems’ vulnerability to hackers, particularly since experts have raised the alarm about attacks they said appeared to be carried out by Russian state-sponsored hackers.

On August 15, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson offered federal assistance to states as they work to secure their voting systems for the upcoming election.

The agency warned states that their databases could be also be targeted in the ten weeks leading up to the general election.

According to the latest report, the Arizona attack wasn’t as large in scope as Illinois’, although malicious software was introduced to the state’s system.

“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 flash alert recommended. Considering that one IP address was used in both attacks, it’s likely that the two attacks are somehow linked. “It was an eye opener”, one senior law enforcement official said of the bureau’s discovery of the intrusions. Yahoo said foreign hackers are responsible. The alert said that the FBI was investigating the intrusions into two states’ election websites whereby one resulted in the “exfiltration” or theft of voter registration data.

The hack shows increasing interest in the United States elections by Russian-based hackers and follows an earlier high-profile hack of Democratic National Committee computers, which revealed embarrassing insights into Hillary Clinton’s nomination as the Democrat party’s democratic candidate.

The FBI’s alert listed eight IP addresses involved in the attacks. “Counting systems typically are not online, whereas the registration system is created to be online in many states”, said Verified Voting’s Smith.

Dean Logan, registrar of voters in Los Angeles County, said the county has a cyber-security unit and outside contractors that constantly monitor all potential threats to the agency’s systems.