Officials said that the two databases were from Illinois and Arizona. In Illinois, officials said they shut down their state’s voter registration after hackers stole data from as many as 200,000 voter records, although no records were deleted or altered.
In Arizona, hackers unsuccessfully tried to enter the voter registration system with malicious software. The state shut down the system for nine days beginning in late June but concluded the system was not successfully compromised.
The FBI sent a “flash alert” to election officials earlier this month, asking them to watch for similar cyber-attacks.
“This is the closest we’ve come to tying a recent hack to the Russian government,” one unidentified official said.
There is “serious concern” that Moscow may be seeking to create uncertainty in the election process or try to manipulate voting results in November, Russian-based hackers from Russian intelligence agencies have also been fingered in the recent hacks into Democratic Party organizations and Democratic National Committee servers.
“The prospect of a hostile government actively seeking to undermine our free and fair elections,” Senate minority leader Harry Reid wrote, “represents one of the gravest threats to our democracy since the Cold War.”