Washington
The Aug. 18 warning, issued after two states suffered intrusions into their systems, comes amid heightened concern over Russian hacks of Democratic party organizations and possible meddling in the presidential election.
The FBI “flash” alert, which is not intended for general public release, listed IP addresses and other technical fingerprints associated with the hacks.
“The FBI is requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any similar activity to their logs, both inbound and outbound, has been detected,” said the FBI alert, which was first reported by Yahoo News.
The warning did not name the states that were targeted. But in June, the Arizona Secretary of State’s office shut down part of its website after the FBI found a potential threat to its state voter registration system, according to The Arizona Republic.
And in July, the Illinois Voter Registration System suffered a cyber intrusion in which hackers were able to retrieve a number of voter records, according to a message from the Illinois State Board of Elections.
The intrusion led the state election board to shut down the voter registration system for a week.
“This was a highly sophisticated attack most likely from a foreign (international) entity,” said Kyle Thomas, the Illinois board’s director of voting and registration systems, in the message.
The FBI declined official comment other than to note it “routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators” it turns up in investigations.
The reported intrusions so far do not appear to have involved manipulation of data — a key concern of U.S. intelligence officials.
On Aug. 15, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson held a conference call with state election officials, offering the Department of Homeland Security’s assistance in protecting against cyber attacks.
He said that DHS was “not aware of any specific or credible cybersecurity threats relating to the upcoming general election systems,” according to a readout of the call.