The Department of Homeland Security informed 21 states and six U.S. territories Friday that their voting systems were targeted by Russian hackers during the 2016 elections.
The DHS previously said it had evidence of the hacking but did not inform the individual states that were targeted. Instead, the agency informed the private vendors or election officials who had “ownership” of the systems.
State election officials had complained that the lack of information was hampering their efforts to secure future elections.
DHS said it allowed the election officials to decide whether or not to share what they learn with the public.
Washington Secretary of State Kim Wyman immediately announced her state was targeted.
“There was no successful intrusion and we immediately alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the activities,” she said in a statement, the Seattle Times reported.
Wyman said the notice from the federal agency “confirmed information her office previously shared with federal security officials last year.”
“The security protocols we already have in place made us aware of these attempted intrusions by Russian IP addresses throughout the course of the 2016 election,” Wyman said.
Wyman’s office said in June it had no knowledge of its election systems being targeted.
In June, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told a House panel that Russian hackers did not change any votes cast in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“I know of no evidence that through cyber intrusion, votes were altered or suppressed in some way,” Johnson told the House Intelligence Committee, which has been investigating alleged Russian interference in the election.
Johnson, who said he testified voluntarily, also revealed the Democratic National Committee rejected an offer of help from his department after internal emails were hacked and released on the eve of the party’s presidential nominating convention.
And the former DHS chief was quizzed about the timing of the statement he released in early October, weeks before the election, warning of Russia interference as well as his decision in January 2016 to designate election infrastructure as a subsector of critical infrastructure, which was criticized by some as a step toward a federal takeover of state elections.
The Washington Post reported in June that U.S. intelligence had the “outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election,” but President Obama chose not to respond.
The Post said the attempts to interfere in the U.S. election were kept secret by the CIA and then Obama after he was informed.
Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year, the paper reported.
In July 2016, the FBI had opened an investigation of contact between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.
