WASHINGTON -- The United States still doesn't know -- and may never know -- the extent of Russian interference in state election systems in 2016, according to bipartisan findings released Tuesday by the Senate intelligence committee. Lawmakers say they do know the U.S. is still vulnerable to such an attack.
The committee made the findings public ahead of the panel's full election security report, which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. The document provides new details about the level of Russian activity during the previous presidential election.
The committee found that in at least six states "Russian-affiliated cyber actors" conducted "malicious access attempts on voting-related websites" that went beyond routine scanning previously reported. In a majority of those cases, the Russians used a common hacking technique to attack the states' public-facing election websites. The committee didn't identify the six states.
The findings were released as votes were counted in four states that held election primaries Tuesday.
"Today's primaries are the next step toward the 2018 midterms and another reminder of the urgency of securing our election systems," said Sen. Richard Burr or North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the panel.
The Department of Homeland Security has previously said there were attempts to hack into the election systems of 21 states, but the extent of the hacking has been unclear in some cases.
The Senate report echoes repeated government claims that there is no evidence that vote tallies or voter registration information was manipulated. But the document says hackers successfully penetrated voter registration databases in a handful of cases.
Illinois is the only state publicly known to have been breached. The document does not list which other states' senators are referring to.
The senators make it clear that there are still many unknowns about what happened in 2016.
The findings also issue a stern warning: Russians could have been testing for a future attack. Election infrastructure is vulnerable in many ways, the document says.
A Section on 05/09/2018