Senator presses DHS on scope of Russian voting hacks
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A Department of Homeland Security official told a Senate panel that it's possible more election systems were targeted than had been reported.
Although the Department of Homeland Security has consistently said 21 states' election systems had been targeted by Russian hackers, a DHS official acknowledged more states could have been affected.
In an April 24 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) pointed out that number reflects only the number of states that had sensors or tools in place to capture the scanning activity.
Jeanette Manfra, assistant secretary for the office of cybersecurity and communications, largely agreed with that interpretation and fended off questions about whether the department had "misled" Congress and the American public about the number of states that had been targeted by Russian hackers in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential elections.
"The 21 states references the visibility that we had, whether that was the intelligence community or the sensors, of Russian targeting of state infrastructure related to elections," she said.
When Manfra didn’t clearly answer a question about how many of the remaining 29 states had similar detection capacity, McCaskill accused DHS of failing to provide a complete picture about the scope of the attacks on U.S. election infrastructure.
"That would be something we'd want to know, because I think the American people have been misled here," McCaskill said. "Because it’s my understanding that a number of the states don't have the tools to capture that activity, so we really have no idea how many states that Russia tried to hack."
Manfra said DHS assumes the majority of states were actually targeted, but activity was only conclusively detected for 21. Bloomberg News reported in June 2017 that as many as 39 states had reported to DHS about finding traces of hackers in their systems, though it's not clear whether those states were reporting scans of public websites or penetration into election IT infrastructure.
Manfra also told the committee that DHS has not seen any evidence thus far of similar scanning or probing in the lead-up to the 2018 mid-term elections.
An official from the National Institute for Standards and Technology confirmed that DHS officials made similar comments a day before at an Election Assistance Commission Board of Advisors meeting.
While Manfra was referencing only one specific aspect of Russia’s alleged influence operation -- scanning and probing of state election IT systems -- U.S. officials at intelligence agencies and DHS have consistently said they expect to see more attempts at election interference from Russia and other countries in the future.
In a February report assessing threats around the globe, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates cited the 2018 mid-term elections as a potential target for Russian influence operations and said that "at a minimum," the intelligence community expects the nation will continue to utilize propaganda, social media, false-flag personas, sympathetic spokespeople and “other means” to sow discord within the U.S. political system.
At an event sponsored by the Election Assistance Commission in January, then-acting DHS Deputy Undersecretary Bob Kolasky said, "We have seen no evidence that the Russian government has changed its intent or capability with respect to meddling with the U.S. election system."
This article was first posted to FCW, a sibling site to GCN.