Feds Notify Election Officials In 21 States Of Hacking Attempts Prior To 2016 Election

Federal authorities informed election officials in each state on Friday of any information it had on potential targeting of voting systems that occurred prior to the 2016 presidential election, the Department of Homeland Security said.

DHS spokesman Scott McConnell told Patch in an emailed statement that the department does not publicly disclose cybersecurity information it shares with its partners and defers to each state on whether it wishes to disclose the information.

The Associated Press contacted every state election office on Friday and while not all of them responded immediately, those that said they were targeted were Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. In most cases, they had not known until notified Friday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Election officials in Washington, Connecticut, Colorado and Wisconsin have said they received information that voting systems in their states were targeted by Russian hackers but that the attempts were unsuccessful.

Samuel Liles, acting Director of Cyber Division of the department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, said in testimony to Congress earlier this year that election-related systems in 21 states were potentially targeted by Russian government cyber actors. The notification to states comes nearly a year after DHS catalogues the suspicious activity.

In a majority of these 21 states, only preparatory activity like scanning was observed and in some states attempts were made to compromise networks but they were unsuccessful. A small number of networks were successfully compromised and in no case were the targeted systems involved in the tallying of votes.

"The good news is that, for the most part, most of the things that we saw attempted in 2016 were just that, attempts," Bob Kolasky, acting deputy under secretary for DHS's National Protection and Programs Directorate, told NPR. "There was nothing that impacted the voting tallies, as we said before, and for the most part these attempts were not successful in any intrusions into systems."

The Colorado Secretary of State's office said in a statement that a scan is "similar to burglars jiggling the doors of a house and moving on when they realize the doors are locked."

When DHS becomes aware of a potential victim it notifies the owner or the operator of the system, who in this case may not necessarily be the Secretary of State’s office.

"However, recognizing that state and local officials should be kept informed about cybersecurity risks to election infrastructure, we are working with them to refine our processes for sharing this information while protecting the integrity of investigations and the confidentiality of system owners," McConnell said in the statement. "This includes the development of an election sub-sector coordinating council and making security clearances available to those who may need access to classified information in the oversight of their election systems. As part of our ongoing information sharing efforts, today DHS notified the Secretary of State or other chief election officer in each state of any potential targeting we were aware of in their state leading up to the 2016 election."

Russians attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election are under investigation by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and by Congress. In the latest development, Facebook is delivering 3,000 ads it believes were bought by Russians to Congress. Top government officials have repeatedly said that while Russians attempted to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump, there is no evidence that actual votes were altered.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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