While the nation is distracted with multiple Russia-laced scandals whether in the collusion investigation or the FISA debacle or Uranium One, one actual Russia scandal has gone unreported…until now.
According to Department of Homeland Security official Jeanette Manfra, who heads the DHS Cyber Security Division, Russia attempted to hack into the voter registration systems of at least 21 states during the 2016 election cycle.
Forensics were able to demonstrate a small number of successes that traced back to the Russian government.
Though it did not effect actual votes cast, it does demonstrate the extreme efforts of Putin’s regime to influence US elections.
Here’s more from Hotair…
Did the Russian government attempt to hack into voting systems in the last election? “No doubt,” Jeanette Manfra tells NBC’s Cynthia McFadden, warning that some information in the probe remains classified. However, the targeted systems did not have anything to do with ballots or counting, and the success was “exceptionally small,” the DHS cybersecurity chief says:
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.” …
“We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government.”
