Thirty-nine states were hit by Russian hackers prior to the 2016 U.S. election. In Illinois, hackers got access to the database and tried to delete or alter voters data. A software was also accessed which was used by poll workers on Election Day.
“Last year, as we detected intrusions into websites managed by election officials around the country, the administration worked relentlessly to protect our election infrastructure,” Eric Schultz, spokesman for former President Barack Obama, told Bloomberg.
“Given that our election systems are so decentralized, that effort meant working with Democratic and Republican election administrators from all across the country to bolster their cyber defenses.”
A former senior U.S official mentioned that Russians now possess knowledge of U.S. election systems prior to the next presidential election.
“The U.S. must start putting precautions in place today that assures voter data and election systems are protected, or else history is bound to repeat itself.”Seclore CEO Vishal Gupta said.
Federal agents found traces of hacking into the database. Many states refused to cooperate with the agency.
“It’s laughable how systems we thought were immune to attack were so woefully under-secured.” Venafi chief security strategist Kevin Bocek said.
“We’ve seen this with ATMs and POS systems,” Bocek added. “The finance and retail industries have effectively responded to their own deep vulnerabilities, and now state, local and federal governments need to respond in the same way to protect voting systems.”
“Without a record of who is accessing, changing or deleting data, it’s virtually impossible to detect the compromise,” he said. “It’s not hard to imagine a scenario where voter data has been compromised but has gone undetected due to lack of auditing or evidence of a breach.”Varonis vice president of field engineering Ken Spinner said
“It’s more important than ever to monitor file activity and user behaviour, so that if an outside party is attempting to manipulate or delete information — as happened in Illinois — that activity is able to be flagged and investigated right away,” Spinner added.
“Whether you’re a small company or a national government, the best risk reduction is to limit access to those who need it the most, keeping sensitive data locked down, and to monitor data access so that when something suspicious happens, you can catch it before it turns into global headlines,” Spinner said.
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