The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee criticized the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday for withholding the names of states and localities that were targeted by Russian hacking attempts last year.
“How can we put the American people on notice when we’ve only revealed two states, yet we have public reports that there are literally dozens?” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told DHS officials. “That makes absolutely no sense.”
“I cannot believe that this was an attack on physical infrastructure in a variety of states, there wouldn’t be a more coordinated response,” Warner added later. “We are not making our country safer if we don’t make sure that all Americans realize the breadth and the extent of what the Russians did in 2016, and frankly if we don’t’ get our act together of what they will do in an even more dramatic form in 2018 and 2020.”
Warner was referencing the report of a leaked document by The Intercept showing the NSA acknowledged that the Russian military carried out cyberattacks on dozens of local election systems. However, all experts have agreed that these attacks did not change any vote tallies.
The leaked document was only published in June, however, meaning many of the jurisdictions were unaware they were the victims of the attacks described in the document, and the public was completely unaware of the scale of the attacks.
Two panelists from DHS appearing before the panel have said they are currently working with 21 states about the attacks. The identities of those states aren’t known, but Arizona and Illinois have publicly acknowledged that they were targets.
In the last days of the Obama administration, DHS designated all voting systems in America as “critical infrastructure,” a move that gave the federal government some managerial and regulatory power over systems that are the purview of state and local governments.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is trying to assess the scale and influence of the Russian hacking attempts last year, but is also trying to build a consensus of how to protect against attacks on voting systems going forward.
“I believe the Russians will absolutely try to continue to conduct influence operations in the U.S., which will include cyberintrusions,” Dr. Samuel Lyles, Acting Director of Cyber Division for DHS told the committee.
