Foreign Hackers Have Breached Voter Databases in Arizona and Illinois

The FBI is currently investigating several voter registration breaches in Arizona and Illinois believed to be caused by foreign hackers, according to new reports.

The Bureau’s Cyber Division issued a warning about the breaches on Aug. 18, and is currently urging states to increase their security ahead of the presidential elections in November, according to Reuters. Yahoo! News reported that the hackers were able to steal data from 200,000 voters in Illinois, but the Arizona hack was unsuccessful. The FBI is also investigating whether other states were targeted in the breach.

Although the Bureau did not identify the intruders in its warning, it did notify Arizona officials that the hacks were of Russian origin, according to the Washington Post. Much of the information included in a voter database is publicly accessible, and the hacks don’t necessarily hint at any attempts to manipulate or coerce voters, Reuters reported. But the U.S. Intelligence community has become increasingly concerned about Russian attempts to disrupt the current presidential election.

The FBI didn’t specify whether the Arizona and Illinois hacks came from criminal hackers, or from intruders from the Russian government, the Washington Post reported. But recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee’s servers were likely carried out by hackers employed by the Kremlin, according to U.S. security experts — although the Russian government has officially denied any involvement.

It’s entirely possible that these hacks were criminal in nature, however — Politico points out that voter databases often include valuable personal information that can be sold on black market websites within the “dark web.” But the cyber attacks on Arizona’s and Illinois’s voter databases were not “especially sophisticated” according to security consulting company, TrustedSec. The company’s CEO, David Kennedy, did tell Reuters that the hacks could “be a precursor to a larger attack.”

The FBI publicly acknowledged the hacks in July, when both states took their voter databases offline. But only in the Aug. 18 Flash Alert did the FBI advise state officials to be on the look out for signs of possible intrusion, Politico reported.