Russian hackers broke into electoral systems in two Florida counties in 2016: NPR

Russian hackers have broken the systems of two county electoral systems in Florida in 2016, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday at a press conference. DeSantis said that no data had been tampered with and the voting counters were not affected.

These intrusions, which had never been publicly confirmed, were revealed for the first time in the report of the special advocate Robert Mueller on the interference of Russia in the election of 2016 of last month.

"I recently met with the FBI about the electoral problem mentioned in the Mueller report," DeSantis said. "Two Florida counties had an intrusion into the supervisor of the electoral networks, there was no manipulation."

DeSantis said he could not reveal which county networks had been compromised, but he said the voter data to which the attackers had access was already public.

"Nothing that affected the vote count," DeSantis said.

A sentence in the Mueller report prompted the DeSantis meeting with the FBI: "We understand that the FBI believes this operation has allowed [Russian military intelligence] to have access to the network of at least one Florida County Government "during the 2016 election.

The mention that Russian hackers had accessed networks in Florida surprised many people in that state.

"I have not even heard a whisper" about such a violation, said Paul Lux, president of the Florida Association of State Election Monitors. , in an interview with NPR last month.

To penetrate Florida's electoral systems, Russian hackers resorted to a spear-phishing campaign, in which they used email addresses designed to resemble a voting system provider to deceive election officials by giving them access to to their networks.

A document leaked by the National Security Agency in 2017 indicated that the company was VR Systems, based in Florida.

The campaign was detailed in an indictment filed last summer by Mueller 's office:

In November 2016 or around the 2016 US presidential election, KOVALEV and his co-conspirators used an email account designed to look like a provider's email address 1 and send over 100 spearphishing emails to organizations and to staff involved in election administration in many parts of Florida. the counties. Spearphishing emails contained malicious software that the conspirators incorporated into Word documents bearing the provider logo.

Last year, former Florida senator Bill Nelson warned that Russia had "entered" Florida's voter registration systems, which election officials denied. vehemently at the time.

Then-Gov. Rick Scott, who defeated Nelson in the Senate race, criticized Nelson's claims and said that they "only serve to erode public confidence in our elections at a critical time."