Tag: voter registration

They’re at it again

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Russian operatives have “penetrated” some of Florida’s election systems ahead of the 2018 midterms, Sen. Bill Nelson said Wednesday, adding new urgency about hacking while the state said it has received “zero information” supporting the claim.

“They have already penetrated certain counties in the state and they now have free rein to move about,” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times. He said something similar a day earlier in Tallahassee but declined to elaborate.

“That’s classified,” the Democrat said Tuesday.

Nelson, who is facing a re-election challenge in November from Gov. Rick Scott, and Florida’s other U.S. Senator, Republican Marco Rubio, wrote a July 2 letter to the 67 county election supervisors about potential threats. But that letter lacked the specificity Nelson has laid out.

“County election boards should not be expected to stand alone against a hostile foreign government,” the lawmakers said in recommending “a wide range of services” from DHS to strengthen security.

“We were requested by the chairman and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee to let supervisors of election in Florida know that the Russians are in their records,” Nelson told the Times on Wednesday. He noted he is a member of the Armed Services subcommittee on cybersecurity.

I’m sure this is nothing to worry about, either:

Cyber chief: Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Japanese exchange says hackers stole over $400M in cryptocurrency

Via NBC News. Of course they did. And deleting names from registration rolls won’t leave a trace, because the names cease to exist and states don’t use audit trails:

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn’t talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, “We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated.”

Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, “2016 was a wake-up call and now it’s incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again.”

Watch Cynthia McFadden on Nightly News tonight for more

“We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government.”

NBC News reported in Sept. 2016 that more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians.

There is no evidence that any of the registration rolls were altered in any fashion, according to U.S. officials.

In a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, 79 percent of the respondents said they were somewhat or very concerned that the country’s voting system might be vulnerable to computer hackers.