On Monday, the Intercept printed a categorized inner NSA doc noting that Russian navy intelligence mounted an operation to hack at the very least one US voting software program provider—which supplied software program associated to voter registration information—within the months previous to final 12 months’s presidential contest. It has beforehand been reported that Russia tried to hack into voter registration programs, however this NSA doc gives particulars of how one such operation occurred.
In line with the Intercept:
The highest-secret Nationwide Safety Company doc, which was supplied anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very not too long ago acquired by the company a few months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort towards components of the US election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated Could 5, 2017, is probably the most detailed US authorities account of Russian interference within the election that has but come to mild.
Whereas the doc gives a uncommon window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it doesn’t present the underlying “uncooked” intelligence on which the evaluation relies. A US intelligence officer who declined to be recognized cautioned towards drawing too large a conclusion from the doc as a result of a single evaluation isn’t essentially definitive.
The report signifies that Russian hacking could have penetrated additional into US voting programs than was beforehand understood. It states unequivocally in its abstract assertion that it was Russian navy intelligence, particularly the Russian Normal Workers Most important Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that performed the cyber assaults described within the doc:
Russian Normal Workers Most important Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations towards a named U.S. firm in August 2016, evidently to acquire data on elections-related software program and {hardware} options. … The actors seemingly used information obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing marketing campaign focusing on U.S. native authorities organizations.
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