Government worker charged after Russian hacking files leaked
Russian hackers attacked at least one US voting software supplier days before last year’s presidential election, according to a leaked government intelligence report that suggests election-related hacking penetrated further into American voting systems than previously known.
The classified National Security Agency report, which was published online, does not say whether the hacking had any effect on election results.
But it says Russian military intelligence attacked a US voting software company and sent phishing e-mails to more than 100 local election officials at the end of October or beginning of November. A Kremlin spokesman denied the report.
US intelligence agencies declined to comment.
However, the justice department announced it had charged a government contractor in Georgia with leaking a classified report containing “Top Secret level” information to an online news organisation.
The report the contractor allegedly leaked is dated 5 May, the same date as the document posted online.
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, of Augusta, Georgia, was charged in the US District Court with copying classified documents and mailing them to a reporter with an unnamed news organisation.
Prosecutors did not say which federal agency Winner worked for, but FBI agent Justin Garrick said in an affidavit filed with the court that she had previously served in the Air Force and held a top-secret security clearance.
Winner’s attorney, Titus Thomas Nichols, declined to confirm whether she is accused of leaking the NSA report.
He also declined to name the federal agency for which Winner worked.
The document said Russian military intelligence “executed cyber espionage operations against a named US company in August 2016 evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions, according to information that became available in April 2017.”
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, denied the allegations yesterday, saying that the Kremlin did not see “any evidence to prove this information is true.”
He said Moscow categorically denies “the possibility” of the Russian government being behind it.
The hackers are believed to have then used data from that operation to create a new e-mail account to launch a phishing campaign targeting US local government organisations, the document said.