Washington Examiner - Political News and Conservative Analysis About Congress, the President, and the Federal Government by Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter
The Trump administration and Michigan officials cast doubt on claims about Russians hacking voter databases from the Wolverine State that were published in Russian media and amplified on social media by U.S. journalists and other left-leaning accounts with large followings.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Homeland Security Department, and the FBI released a joint statement on Tuesday that said they “have not seen cyber attacks this year on voter registration databases,” and, separately, the Michigan Department of State asserted that “our system has not been hacked.”
With roughly two months until Election Day, U.S. officials also urged people to be more careful when sharing unverified stories.
“CISA and the FBI have not seen cyber attacks this year on voter registration databases or on any systems involving voting. We closely coordinate with our federal, state, and local election partners to safeguard our voting processes. We and our partners continually monitor the risks related to all methods of voting during our elections. And we regularly provide this information to the state and local election officials who are responsible for our voting systems,” CISA and the FBI said. “Information on U.S. elections is going to grab headlines, particularly if it is cast as foreign interference. Early, unverified claims should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. More importantly, we encourage voters to look to trusted sources of info, in this case state election officials who have correctly pointed out that a lot of voter registration data is publicly available or easily purchased.”
Kommersant, a Russian newspaper, published the thinly sourced story Tuesday, claiming that hackers “posted databases of 7.6 million Michigan voters, as well as millions of residents of other U.S. states” on a “Russian hacker site.” The story cited “experts” who “admit that the publication of the databases may be a provocation before the next U.S. presidential elections.” No evidence was provided. Kommersant claimed, “The hackers themselves also speak about the weak protection of personal data of American voters” and that “one of the database vendors said that it would be enough to find one of the many vulnerabilities of the sites used in voting, and then use … the injection of malicious code into the database.”
Michigan’s election officials joined the DHS and the FBI in disputing the report.
“Public voter information in Michigan and elsewhere is accessible to anyone through a FOIA request,” the Michigan secretary of state’s office said. “Our system has not been hacked. We encourage all Michigan voters to be wary of attempts ‘hack’ their minds, however, by questioning the sources of information and advertisements they encounter and seeking out trusted sources, including their local election clerk and our office.”
The disputed Russian story went viral on Tuesday largely due to GQ correspondent Julia Ioffe tweeting it out, accompanied with three blaring red siren emojis, to her 245,000 followers, eventually garnering more than 11,800 retweets. Ioffe claimed that “Russian journalists have discovered data from Michigan voter data rolls — including the personal info of 7.6 million Michigan voters — on a Russian hackers’ platform” and “it also includes voter info from other swing states.” Michigan’s secretary of state replied directly to her to dispute the story’s claims.
The story ricocheted across Twitter, with left-leaning commentators using the story to criticize the Trump administration, often pointing to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s decision to switch election security briefings from in person to in writing over concerns about leaks and politicization. Amy Siskind of the Weekly List website told her 480,000 followers: “Guess this is what Ratcliffe is trying to hide from Congress and the American people!” Fred Wellman, a senior adviser for The Lincoln Project, quipped: “This seems like something our ODNI should brief Congress on … oh wait. They don’t do that anymore.”
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former chief technology officer of the Crowdstrike cybersecurity firm, tweeted (then deleted): “Looks like Michigan, Connecticut, Arkansas, Florida, and North Carolina may have had their voter registration databases hacked as recently as last year.” He soon reversed himself, saying, “I have confirmed that at least for some of the released databases, the released fields are confided public info in those states… This may not be a hack after all.”
Experts also cast aspersions on the story. Alex Stamos, a Stanford Internet Observatory researcher, said, “This information is generally public and could have been taken from hundreds of customers of voter information brokers,” and “dark web forums, especially ones in Russian, are chock full of free and paid data dumps like this with no immediate use.” Dustin Volz, a Wall Street Journal cyber reporter, noted: “This data is available publicly and there’s no evidence of an actual hack. The Russian ‘hackers platform’ is a two-bit site for data sharing. We all need to do a better job — especially on social media — of not jumping on hyped, unverified claims about election hacking/interference.”
Last week, a senior DHS official told reporters that the department deployed sensors on state networks in every state and that “we haven’t seen to date a ramp-up in activity targeting election infrastructure over the last few months.” He said that “we certainly haven’t seen something like what we saw with Illinois in 2016 at this point in time,” when the Russians hacked the Illinois State Board of Elections website and compromised the sensitive details from at least 76,000 voters.
“We know the targeting of election infrastructure is in the playbook — we saw it in 2016, and we know it’s an option now” but that the DHS had seen “nothing specific where we’ve seen lots of attempts specifically against any given system,” the official said.
Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in early August warning Russia is trying to denigrate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. He also said China “prefers” that Trump not win reelection and is “expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020″ and that Iran “seeks to undermine” Trump’s presidency.