The Wall Street Journal | By: Alexa Corse | July 11, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET:
The intrusion failed, but the incident prompted new precautions and concern by lawmakers.
Last August, Maryland’s State Board of Elections noticed something suspicious: Someone was probing the state’s online voter-registration system, using an internet address originating in the Netherlands.
“They were trying to knock at the door to see if they could get in,” said Nikki Charlson, Maryland’s deputy state administrator of elections.
The system wasn’t penetrated, Ms. Charlson said, nor did the activity affect systems involved in vote tallying, which aren’t connected to the internet.
Still, Maryland’s disclosure is one of several new reports indicating that attempts to hack election systems in 2016 were more widespread than previously known. Russian government hackers targeted voting systems in 21 states, Jeanette Manfra, acting undersecretary for cybersecurity and communications at the federal Department of Homeland Security, told the Senate Intelligence Committee last month.
Previously, only a handful of states, including Arizona and Illinois, had publicly confirmed hacking attempts against their election systems.
Maryland’s experience shows the challenges hackers pose to a state, even one that jumps on a problem quickly. Federal help to define the threat was slow to arrive, and state elections officials had to walk a fine line between pursuing a security problem and sowing doubts about the soundness of their electoral process.
Maryland state lawmakers didn’t find out about the attempted intrusion until 10 months later, via news reports, raising concern about their ability to oversee the elections system.
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