2018 Midterm Elections: Hackers Trying To Steal Voter Data, DHS Says

A latest intelligence assessment report by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed there have been increasing attempts by individuals or entities to hack into the midterm elections of the United States.

“We are aware of a growing volume of cyber activity targeting election infrastructure in 2018," the department's Cyber Mission Center said in an intelligence assessment issued last week, which was obtained by NBC News. "Numerous actors are regularly targeting election infrastructure, likely for different purposes, including to cause disruptive effects, steal sensitive data, and undermine confidence in the election."

The hacking efforts intensified manifold since April this year, but traces of such attacks could be detected since October 2017. While all cyber attempts to compromise the midterms were either prevented or neutralized, the DHS admitted they have not been able to determine the source of the attacks so far.

The attacks mainly take place through malicious emails disguised as legitimate and by conducting denial-of-service attacks. For example, three different methods were used to infiltrate Vermont’s online voter registration database in August, all of which proved unfruitful.

"The good news is that our defenses are robust, were in place, and did their job," Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos said.

Condos added that since his state’s voter registration list was backed up every single day, “if it were somehow to be breached, we would just go back 24 hours and reset it. We'd only lose one day's worth. And we also have same-day voter registration, which means that no one would be denied on election day."

DHS added that improved coordination between the federal department and the states’ election offices have aided in ensuring the cyber-attacks are quickly comprehended and mitigated.

“Due to improved relationships between DHS and our state and local election partners, our partners have increased their reporting of what they are seeing to DHS, which is contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the threats facing our nation’s election infrastructure," a DHS official said in an emailed statement to Axios.

"This does not necessarily mean that our partners are seeing an increase in threats to their networks ... As we have consistently said, we have not seen any activity of the scale or level of coordination that we saw in 2016,” the statement added.

While intelligence officials maintained the hacking attempts were not as “robust” as they were in the 2016 election, preventing the attacks was paramount, especially since most of the states had no plans of redoing their election infrastructure less than 30 days before the midterms.

Also unlike in 2016, the intelligence officials have found no reason to believe that foreign adversaries are behind the cyber-attacks on the midterm elections.