Leaked report highlights election flaws

Document underscores vulnerability of voting systems to foreign attack.

HOUSTON — A newly leaked intelligence document outlining alleged attempts by Russian military intelligence to hack into U.S. election systems is the latest piece of evidence suggesting a broad, sophisticated foreign attack on the integrity of U.S. elections.

And it underscores the contention of security experts and computer scientists that the highly decentralized, often ramshackle U.S. election system remains profoundly vulnerable to trickery or sabotage.

The document, purportedly produced by the U.S. National Security Agency, does not indicate whether actual vote-tampering occurred. But it adds significant new detail to previous U.S. intelligence assessments that alleged that Russia-backed hackers had compromised elements of America’s electoral machinery, and suggests that attackers may also have been laying groundwork for future subversive activity.

The operation described in the document could have given “the Russians a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack,” said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. “We don’t have evidence that that happened,” he said, “but that’s a very real possibility.”

Computer scientists have proven in the lab that once they’re inside an election network, sophisticated attackers could manipulate pre-election programming and alter results without leaving a trace.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said Tuesday that hacking into state voting systems ahead of the Nov. 8 vote was more widespread than has been disclosed.

Attempts by Russia to “break into a number of our state voting processes” was “broad-based,” he said, without offering details. In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman categorically denied Tuesday that Moscow had tried to hack the U.S. elections.

Warner did not directly address the classified intelligence report published Monday by The Intercept, an online news outlet. Its apparent leaker, an NSA contract worker, was arrested last weekend in Georgia.

The NSA document says Russian military intelligence first targeted employees of a Florida voting systems supplier in August. Apparently exploiting technical data obtained in that operation, the cyber spies later sent phishing emails to more than 100 local U.S. election officials just days ahead of the Nov. 8 vote, intent on stealing their login credentials and breaking into the their systems, the document says.

The emails packed malware into Microsoft Word documents and were forged to give the appearance of being sent by the system vendor, VR Systems of Tallahassee, Fla. The Department of Homeland Security knew in September that hackers believed to be Russian agents had targeted the voter registration systems of more than 20 states. To date, no evidence of tampering with vote tallies or registration rolls has emerged.

The U.S. elections system is a patchwork of more than 3,000 jurisdictions overseen by the states with nearly no federal oversight or standards.

The attack sketched out in the NSA document appears to have been designed specifically to cope with that sprawl.

The NSA document did not name any of the states where local officials were targeted. But in September, the FBI held a conference call with all 67 county elections supervisors in the battleground state of Florida to inform them of infiltration of VR Systems without naming the company.

Ion Sancho, who retired as Leon County elections supervisor in December, said he later learned from industry contacts that it was VR Systems.

VR Systems officials did not respond directly to reporters’ emailed questions. In a statement, the company said it only knows of a “handful” of customers who received the fraudulent email, adding that it had “no indication” that anyone had clicked on the malware.

The company makes software for on-site voter registration at polling stations and backend systems for voting management, which says it has customers in California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said that the Russian election interference was bigger than what was detailed in a intelligence report leaked earlier this week.