2016 ELECTION/CYBERWAR/DHS/INTELLIGENCE/RUSSIA: “House investigators are examining Wednesday [6-21-17] Russia’s attempts to hack into state elections systems with former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson before the House intelligence committee.
‘In 2016 the Russian government, at the direction of (Russian President) Vladimir Putin himself, orchestrated cyberattacks on our nation for the purpose of influencing our election — plain and simple. Now, the key question for the president and Congress is: What are we going to do to protect the American people and their democracy from this kind of thing in the future?’ Johnson said in his opening remarks.
The coordinated hacking effort from Russian-aligned hackers has received minimal attention in the congressional probes into Russia’s interference in the election. President Donald Trump and his supporters have regularly noted that no votes were ever changed by Russian hackers — something Obama and Trump administration intelligence officials have regularly stated in their testimony.
But concerns about the security of voters’ information were raised anew after a Republican voter data firm, Deep Root, accidentally left the data of 198 million voters exposed online earlier this month. And questions of what the Russian government was attempting resurfaced recently after a National Security Agency contractor allegedly leaked a report detailing those hacking attempts to a news outlet.”
-Tom LoBianco, “House Russia probe digs into voter roll hacks with former DHS secretary,” CNN politics, CNN.com, June 21, 2017 10:28am