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Official Says Russia Targeted 21 States for Election Hacking

Testimony is first time a DHS official has publicly quantified the number of states affected

By Byron Tau Updated June 21, 2017 10:46 a.m. ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-hacking-hearings-to-focus-on-state-level-1498037401

WASHINGTON—A senior Department of Homeland Security official told Congress on Wednesday that federal investigators had evidence that the Russian government targeted election systems in nearly two dozen states during the 2016 elections.

“As of right now, we have evidence of election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted,” said Jeanette Manfra, the acting deputy undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications at DHS. Her remarks came in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting a wide-ranging probe of Russian activities in the elections.

It was the first time a DHS official had publicly quantified the number of states targeted by the hacking.

Ms. Manfra didn’t make clear whether those penetration attempts were successful, nor did she name any of the 21 states—citing the privacy rights of entities that contacted DHS for help on cybersecurity-related issues. Only two states—Arizona and Illinois—have publicly acknowledged that their systems were targeted.

Ms. Manfra testified along with Samuel Liles, another DHS official who runs the cyber division of the office of intelligence and analysis at the agency, as well as Bill Priestap, the assistance director of the counterintelligence division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

All three officials said no evidence existed that vote tallies were changed and that much of the data targeted was voter-registration information.

“I think they took the data to understand what it consisted of,” said Mr. Priestap said about Russian hacking efforts.

The Senate and House intelligence committees are holding two open hearings Wednesday to examine Russian hacking efforts during the elections, featuring testimony from current and former DHS and FBI officials as well as state election directors.

In prepared remarks, former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told the House committee that sometime between August and September the intelligence community became “increasingly convinced” that the Russian government was responsible for the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and other political entities, and “I and others also became personally convinced that we needed to inform the American public, prior to the election, of what we knew the Russian government was doing.”

“To my current knowledge, the Russian government did not through any cyberintrusion alter ballots, ballot counts or reporting of election results,” Mr. Johnson said in the prepared remarks. “I am not in a position to know whether the successful Russian government-directed hacks of the DNC and elsewhere did in fact alter public opinion and thereby alter the outcome of the presidential election.”

Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether campaign advisers to President Donald Trump had ties to the Russian activities, a probe that has expanded to include whether the president obstructed justice by trying to influence its outcome, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Russia has denied the allegations. On Sunday, a personal lawyer for Mr. Trump, who has called the investigations a “witch hunt,” denied that the president was under investigation.

States are also examining their own systems. A survey by The Wall Street Journal of election officials in nearly 50 states found many continue to participate in a DHS program of periodic checks of their election systems for any vulnerabilities.

Many officials had been in touch with the FBI before the election, when the bureau had provided states with a list of suspicious IP addresses.

—Rebecca Ballhaus and Erica Orden contributed to this article.

Write to Byron Tau at [e-mail]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-hacking-hearings-to-focus-on-state-level-1498037401