Feds didn’t tell state about hacking for a year
MADISON - Wisconsin officials for a year were not told about specific attempts by the Russian government to gain access to the state’s voter registration database, the leaders of the state Elections Commission said Friday.
Friday’s statement from the commission comes after a week of conflicting reports about what Russian agents attempted to do and when state and federal officials knew about it.
Wisconsin systems were targeted in July and August 2016. Wisconsin officials were aware of the attempts but not that Russian government actors were behind them, according to Friday’s statement and public records. In one of the incidents, the attack was targeted at a different state agency, not the Elections Commission.
Friday’s statement was issued by Mark Thomsen, the commission’s chairman, and Michael Haas, the commission’s administrator and the state’s chief elections officer.
The federal Department of Homeland Security “did not inform (the state Department of Administration) or the Wisconsin Elections Commission of the Russian government’s involvement in those specific attempts” until last week, Thomsen and Haas said in their statement.
When state officials asked why they hadn’t been notified earlier, Homeland Security officials initially claimed they had told the state in October 2016 that the Russian government was behind the attempted attacks, the two said. Those federal officials now acknowledge they did not disclose that fact, they said.
Records released under the state’s open records law show Homeland Security officials in October 2016 asked the state to check activities involving specific computers. They did not mention the involvement of the Russian government, but their request came a week after the
federal agency alerted states that Russians — though not necessarily the Russian government — were targeting election systems.
“There’s a difference between DHS telling states to be on the lookout for Russian hacking attempts of state elections systems and DHS notifying the owner of a system that it was the target of an unsuccessful attempt,” commission spokesman Reid Magney said by email. “(The Department of Administration) never got that notification, and DHS officials subsequently acknowledged to Mike Haas that (the Department of Administration) was not notified.”
The Department of Homeland Security was run by President Barack Obama’s administration when the attempts occurred, and the state also was not told during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s administration.
Two incidents in Wisconsin have come under scrutiny.
In the first, Russians attempted in July 2016 to get into an inactive computer that belongs to the state Department of Workforce Development. Homeland Security officials now believe the Russians were attempting to find weaknesses in state systems that they could exploit to try to get into elections systems, according to Friday’s statement.
In the second incident, a malicious web ad was set to show up on an Elections Commission computer but was not displayed because it was blocked by a firewall. If it had been displayed, the ad could have taken the user to a system federal officials later determined is linked to the Russian government.
“(The state’s) web content filtering system proactively blocked the outbound traffic and the user had no opportunity to be directed to the suspect IP address,” Department of Administration spokesman Steven Michels said by email.
About 9 million times a year, hackers attempt to “scan” state systems as they hunt for vulnerabilities, according to Michels.
Magney said state officials this week have been consulting with Christopher Krebs, the undersecretary for Homeland Security’s National Protection and Programs Directorate, and Jeanette Manfra, an assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications.
Wisconsin is one of 21 states whose elections systems were targeted by the Russian government, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Here, hackers were seeking to get into the voter registration system, which could have allowed them to steal personal information or change the registration status of voters. There is no evidence so far of attempting to break into voting machines in Wisconsin, which would be much more difficult because, unlike the registration system, voting machines aren’t connected to the internet.