A suspected Russian hacker probed a voter registration database in Arizona and another unidentified attacker gained entry to one in Illinois this summer, election officials said, prompting the FBI to warn states their election boards should conduct vulnerability scans. The systems that count votes in elections were not compromised, officials said, and the hacks don’t appear to be politically motivated. Still, the breaches add to concerns such attacks could exploit the personal data of millions of voters for monetary or political gain. Those worries have been running high after July reports that the Democratic National Committee’s email system had been hacked, a breach U.S. intelligence officials believe was perpetrated by the Russian government. “We’re all very aware that it’s less than 80 days before an important election,” said Pamela Smith with Verified Voting, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for election transparency.
Election officials in Illinois and Arizona told USA TODAY they took their voter registration databases offline briefly last month as they became aware of attempted breaches to their systems.
Matt Roberts, a spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, said state authorities were notified last month by the FBI of the suspected hack, when it was discovered the username and password of a county election official were being circulated online.
The Arizona system was shut down for several days, Roberts said, but there was no evidence that any information related to the 3.4 million voters in the database was compromised. Roberts said authorities believe the source of the attempted intrusion was a Russian hacker.
Full Article: Hackers hit Arizona, Illinois voter databases.