I bet many states were too busy with their voter suppression efforts to worry about Russians scooping up data to target certain voters with ads. And they worried about the vote tallying system and not the voter registration rolls.
Russians might well conclude that intervening in behalf of Roy Moore-like challengers to establishment GOP candidates would be an effective way of sowing chaos.
Let’s be honest: This is a problem that pre-dated the Trumpists’ taking over the government. I’m sure it has got worse since then, but it started in DHS inefficiency (if that’s what it was) under the Obama administration.
Got news for you: Russia didn’t just try to hack voting systems in several US states…Russia hacked several states and they most likely changed a good number of votes. The election was bogus!
I wonder if Mueller’s team is looking into campaign donations.
How does this compare with the list of states that rejected help from DHS in securing their systems?
Remember when Trump and his boys threw up their hands because if the Russians wanted to do stuff like this they were too good and would never be found? It was a stupid defense then and looks even dumber now. What a clownshow,.
It was the announcement from Homeland Security that the attempts we’re “mostly” unsuccessful that worries me.
What? They only hacked 10 or fewer states?
It is my personal belief that this was a goal of the Russians in hacking into state election systems. Whether or not they were successful in that, i don’t know. No information has come to light to say definitively yes or no. But it should be of interest to everybody to investigate how this happened and how to prevent future attempts to mess with our elections.
Also, great article, TPM! I’m never disappointed by a Tierney Sneed article, she does great work for you.
Trump and his fellow stooges love Russia more than they love America. Read the stories. QED.
(Apologies to Iggy and those other three)
Somewhere, right now, Glenn Greenwald’s ears are burning. 
I’ve not yet heard that claim made by anybody I believe would have access to sufficient evidence.
Please note that DHS did not say voting machines were hacked, rather the voting rolls were hacked, but not for the purpose of stealing them. They were hacked to coordinate targeting various voting groups so the FB and twitter and google ads could be targeted at the right people.
As alarming as the DHS findings were, the cyber activity that the bulk of the targeted states experienced is so common, that some state officials were surprised that it was even being described as attempted cyber targeting. The activity is called “scanning” and, as Liles noted, it’s the equivalent of burglar just looking at the windows and doors to see what potential vulnerabilities exist.
Unless there is more to the description, if “scanning” refers to “port scanning” then this is not like looking at windows and doors; it is attempting to open the windows and turning the handles of the doors. “Looking at” would be an undetectable investigation into which technologies are being used, not actually hitting ports to see which are left open. This is rattling windows and turning knobs, which you would be quite right to see as suspicious and something you should pay attention to.
Yes, port scans are routine. But they show malevolent intent, and are, generally, prosecutable (albeit as very low-end misdemeanors). They precede a full-on, often undetected, attack.
The fact is, we generally do not take such threats nearly as seriously as we should in this country (or hell, as a society in general, outside the spy and hacking agencies). If you are seeing a port scan you need to take immediate action, and it is clear that neither the states nor the federal authorities acted as quickly as they needed to here.
It really depends on what you mean by “most likely changed a good number of votes”.
Given the widespread disinformation campaign, we already know that they changed a very large number of votes, simply by taking advantage of low-information voters and making them believe their wildest conspiracy theories were well supported and accepted. Given the evidence at hand, I find it highly unlikely that any hacking into any voting systems had nearly the same level of intent-skewing effect on the election as the disinformation campaign.
Hacking into voting roll systems could have had a similar or larger effect, and I think given the absolutely lethargic lackluster response to this threat our government is summoning now we have exactly that to look forward to in the next elections (2018 and definitely 2020). But, voting roll manipulation is something which would cause election-day chaos but be immediately evident (people tend to complain when they are turned away from the polls). We haven’t seen the level of complaints which we would expect to see given an effective voting roll corruption campaign.
Overall, I think it is absolutely correct to say that Russia “hacked” several states to the point of changing the outcome of the election in those states. But that isn’t new news here. The new news here is that they are preparing for a much more devastating attack on voting rolls and election systems which will hit us in 2018 or 2020 or maybe even 2024, whichever Russia feels might be the most advantageous use of this attack vector.
There needs to be a rigorous investigation of the security of all aspects of voting, from the registration rolls to the vote-by-mail/absentee ballot mechanisms to all aspects of in person voting, both hardware and software.
I don’t see how conclusions can be authoritative until such an effort is undertaken and completed.
This. The port scan lets them know the details of the system they are about to attack. And the russians are smart enough to launch real attacks from addresses that are harder to recognize as theirs.
In other words, nobody knows shit about anything, communication lines were non-existent anyway, and whether or no they found one, the Russians were looking really hard for an unlocked window.
Better not pass any laws that might prevent this next year. That would be un-Russian.