Hackers may have accessed D.C. voter information, elections board says
District and federal agencies are investigating after a hacking group claimed to have accessed 600,000 lines of U.S. voting data maintained by the D.C. Board of Elections, including records from city voters, the agency said in a statement Friday.
The elections board said it first became aware Thursday that a hacking group had taken credit for the breach. The agency said it had confirmed that voter records were accessed through a breach of its website hosting provider, DataNet Systems, but said no internal databases or servers were directly affected.
The FBI, Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, Department of Homeland Security and D.C.'s Office of the Chief Technology Officer are among the agencies investigating the breach. The D.C. Board of Elections took down its main website after learning it was the source of the breach, and replaced it with a maintenance page. The agency also said it had conducted vulnerability scans on its database, server and other IT networks.
Sarah Graham, director of communications for the elections board, said the hacking group had not requested a ransom from the agency related to the data breach — a common tactic from hacking groups who illegally obtain sensitive information and then threaten to publish it online. Graham also said there was no estimate of how long the agency’s website will be down.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/10/06/dc-elections-board-hack/
