Russia 'exploited the seams' in U.S. election security defenses ahead of 2016, and federal officials failed to effectively raise the alarm to the right state and local officials about the threat they faced, new Senate report says.
Russia"exploited the seams" in U.S. election security defenses ahead of the 2016 presidential election, and federal officials failed to effectively raise the alarm to the right state and local officials about the threat they faced, according to a new Senate report.
"In 2016, the U.S. was unprepared at all levels of government for a concerted attack from a determined foreign adversary on our election infrastructure," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in statement."Since then, we have learned much more about the nature of Russia's cyber activities and better understand the real and urgent threat they pose.
While the nation-wide scanning and probing was going on, the federal government was struggling to properly address, or even understand the threat, the Senate report said. It cited state and local officials who said some of the Department of Homeland Security personnel with whom they were dealing with didn't appear to understand how elections worked.
It notes that in 2017 a two-person DHS team sat in with one state's officials during a special election. Though they"really didn't do much," their"presence was comforting," the report says, quoting an unidentified source. "Based on what the [intelligence community] knows about Russia's operating procedures and intentions more broadly, the [intelligence community] assesses that Russia's activities against U.S. election infrastructure likely sought to further their overarching goal; undermining the integrity of elections and American confidence in democracy," it says.
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