Russian Spies Directly Targeted Voting System In 2016 Election: Reports

NEW YORK, NY — Russian government hackers may have directly targeted an election-voting software company as well as election officials, according to a new report from The Intercept that cites a National Security Agency top-secret document leaked to the website. Rebecca Shabad, a reporter for CBS News, said on Twitter that her network confirmed the veracity of the document. The Intercept reporters caution that a single report is not definitive evidence, but they write that if true, the report reveals a much deeper level of attack on the American electoral process than has been publicly known.

Previously, the American intelligence community has reported on extensive efforts by the Russian government to covertly influence popular sentiment during the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton and in favor of Donald Trump, most notably by releasing hacked emails from the Democratic National Convention and Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta. Multiple investigative bodies are currently examining these efforts, including possible collusion with the Trump campaign. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently denied that any such intelligence operations took place. (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch for daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

In the discussion of Russia's meddling in the election, Republicans have been at pains to emphasize that no evidence shows that vote tallies were altered. The NSA did not immediately respond for a comment on this story.

Read the full report at The Intercept.

What does all this mean? Eric Geller, a cybersecurity reporter for Politico, noted on Twitter that it's very unlikely that the Russians could have tried to use these methods to affect final vote tallies directly.

"It's possible that Russia could have messed with voter registries in certain districts," he wrote, "but that's speculative and hard to do at scale."

He continued:

He concludes: "There are real security issues in the chain of technology here, but no evidence of a successful hack."

Shortly after the report broke, the Justice Department announced it had arrested and was charging a woman named Reality Winner, a former government contractor, with leaking classified documents to an "online news agency." Many observers noted the coincidence of the arrest report with the posting of the story, and NBC News later reporter that Winner was indeed the woman who leaked to the Intercept.

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