The Intercept releases top secret NSA documents about Russian hacking of US voting systems

On Monday, intercept released confidential NSA documents Russia’s military intelligence agency said it launched an operation to hack at least one U.S. voting software supplier that provided software related to voter registration files in the months before last year’s presidential election. . It has previously been reported that Russia attempted to hack into voter registration systems, and this NSA document provides details on how such operations were carried out.

by intercept:

Top secret National Security Agency documents provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated reveal how the National Security Agency is investigating the months-long Russian intelligence cyberattack on elements of U.S. election and voting infrastructure. Analyzing recently obtained information. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian election interference yet revealed.

Although this document provides a valuable insight into the NSA’s understanding of how Russian hacking works, it does not provide the fundamental “raw” information on which to base its analysis. A U.S. intelligence official, who declined to be named, cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the document, as a single analysis is not necessarily conclusive.

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated the U.S. voting system further than previously understood. In its summary statement, the document unequivocally states that the cyberattacks described in the document were carried out by Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff’s Intelligence Directorate (GRU).

Officials from the Russian General Staff’s Principal Intelligence Directorate carried out cyberespionage against designated U.S. companies in August 2016, apparently to obtain information about election-related software and hardware solutions. It was for a reason. …The attackers likely used the data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting local government organizations in the United States.

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