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WASHINGTON – In the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Russian military intelligence services penetrated the computer systems of at least one Florida County government and installed malicious programs into systems. at a manufacturer of election materials, special advocate Robert S. Mueller III in his newspaper. Final report of the office on the interference of Russia in the elections.
The report does not cite any evidence that the violations have compromised the election results in Florida or elsewhere, and indicated that Mr. Mueller had left a more in-depth investigation into these incidents at the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security.
The revelation of the alleged violation has added to the reports of Russia's systematic efforts to gain access to voter lists and other electoral systems described by the US intelligence services last year and in federal indictments.
The special council's report also mentioned another computer attack in Illinois, already reported, when the attack in Florida had not been disclosed before. The penetration of the election materials manufacturer, identified elsewhere by the VR Systems name in Tallahassee, Florida, was known – but the fact that malware was specifically invoked is not known. The company makes electronic notebooks and other tools that help officials organize elections, but does not manufacture voting machines.
On Thursday, the Florida State Department, which oversees the elections, said it "had no knowledge or evidence of a successful county-level hacking attempt during the 2016 elections." . Officials said that after reading the information contained in the Mueller report, the state contacted the FBI to find out more and the bureau refused to provide details on the county government's alleged violation. in Mr. Mueller's report.
The state said that domestic security officials said in 2017 that Russian attacks against its electoral systems had failed.
"The department claims that the 2016 Florida elections have not been hacked," said the Florida State Department.
Experts have traced Russia's efforts to find vulnerabilities in the computer systems of elections in dozens of states before the presidential election, and some now assume that each state was targeted at one point or another.
Mueller's report indicated that Russian military intelligence agents, commonly known as GRUs, had targeted computers on state electoral boards, state secretaries, and county governments, as well as computers used by employees of these organizations.
The report cites only three cases in which agents actually had access to computer systems. In Florida, in November 2016, Russian officers sent more than 120 spear phishing emails to election officials in Florida counties. "The F.B.I. believes that this operation allowed G.R.U. access the network of at least one Florida County government, "says the report.
In Illinois, hackers infiltrated a voter registration database with the state election council in June 2016 and, according to a federal indictment of the Last year, have downloaded the personal information of about 500 000 voters before being detected.
Both the federal government and state officials have previously stated that Russian attacks on electoral systems have failed to alter any vote.
In the third case at the manufacturer of election materials, the Mueller report states that G.R.U. the agents have installed malware in a company computer.
In a statement released Thursday, VR Systems' chief operating officer, Ben Martin, did not directly address the reported malware plant, saying only that details of Russia's spearphishing attempts were known for a long time. The company has since hired private and federal experts to evaluate its security practices, the statement said.
A report from the National Security Agency a leak in 2017 indicates that a Russian spearphishing attack probably compromised the computer of an employee, but gave little details.
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