Russians Penetrated US Electoral System-Top US Security Official
A US Official in-charge of protecting US elections from
intrusions or hackers has confessed in an exclusive interview to NBC News that
Russia penetrated the US electoral system and might have interfered with the voter
registration of about 21 States
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 21States and an exceptionally small number of them were
actually successfully penetrated."
Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russians intrusions,
said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds
to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again."
"We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of
voter registration databases was coming from the Government.
NBC News reported in Setember 2016, that more than 20
states had been targeted by the Russians.
There is no evidence that any of the registration rolls were
altered in any fashion, according to U.S. officials.
In a new NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll, 79 percent of the
respondents said they were somewhat or very concerned that the country's voting
system might be vulnerable to computer hackers.
In January 2017, just weeks before leaving his post, Johnson
declared the nation's electoral systems part of the nation's federally
protected "critical infrastructure," a designation that applies to
entities like the power grid that could be attacked. It made protecting the
electoral systems an official duty of DHS.
But Johnson told NBC News he is now worried that since the 2016
election a lot of states have done little to nothing "to actually
harden their cybersecurity."
Manfra said she didn't agree with Johnson's assessment. "I
would say they have all taken it seriously."
NBC News reached out to the 21 states that were targeted. Five
states, including Texas and California, said they were never attacked.
Manfra said she stands by the list, but also called it a
"snapshot in time with the visibility that the department had at that
time."
Other states that NBC contacted said they were still waiting for
cybersecurity help from the federal government. Manfra said there was no
waiting list and that DHS will get to everyone.
Some state officials had opposed Johnson's designation of
electoral systems as critical infrastructure, viewing it a federal intrusion.
John believe that officials of every State in the US should be
on the same page on the thought that the Federal Government should provide the necessary
help to avoid a recurrence of such event that thwart their US electoral system
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