Hackers have ramped up their efforts to meddle with the country’s election infrastructure in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s midterms, sparking a raft of investigations into election interference, internal intelligence documents show. The hackers have targeted voter registration databases, election officials, and networks across the country, from counties in the Southwest to a city government in the Midwest, according to Department of Homeland Security election threat reports reviewed by the Globe. The agency says publicly all the recent attempts have been prevented or mitigated, but internal documents show hackers have had “limited success.” The recent incidents, ranging from injections of malicious computer code to a massive number of bogus requests for voter registration forms, have not been publicly disclosed until now. Federal agencies have logged more than 160 reports of suspected meddling in US elections since Aug. 1, documents show. The pace of suspicious activity has picked up in recent weeks — up to 10 incidents each day — and officials are on high alert.
… In the last week of October alone, at least half a dozen states reported barrages of malicious log-in attempts on voter databases and election security systems, reports show. One state, which is unnamed in the documents, successfully blocked about 51,594 login attempts from foreign countries in a 24-hour period, documents show. The following day, another state fended off another 52,092 attempts.
Investigators have said a handful of the hacking attempts targeting separate election networks in several states are connected, documents show.
Internal intelligence documents show some of the cyber meddling efforts have had “limited success.” On Oct. 23, a senior official in charge of a state’s election process had a personal social media account hacked and reregistered to a Russian e-mail provider, a report shows. The report does not list the state or include other identifying details.
Full Article: Hackers targeting election networks across country in lead up to midterms – The Boston Globe.