14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA is once more at the center of a scandal as it has been revealed that the agency knew that Russian intelligence agents managed to hack a US voting system manufacturer in the weeks before the 2016 presidential elections.
According to The Intercept, the information comes from a highly classified National Security Agency report. The report comes just as Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old federal contractor from Georgia, was charged with removing classified documents from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet. Putting two and two together at this stage isn't that difficult, and it's pretty clear that Winner is a new NSA whistleblower.
It's already known that hackers of the Fancy Bear group, which has been linked to Russia on numerous accounts, hacked the email accounts of senior Democrats during the campaign, leaking information online. This eventually led to numerous image issues for the Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton and aided in Donald Trump becoming president.
Up until now, it was believed the vote-counting system had not been affected by Russians' hacking efforts.
The Intercept's report indicates, however, that Russian military intelligence was successful in an attack against at least one US voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to over a hundred local election officials ahead of the poll.
The document the Intercept published was dated just a month ago, on May 5, 2017, and seems to be the most detailed US government account of the Russian interference in last year's elections.
While this classified document does not directly identify the company that was hacked, there are clues that it might very well be VR Systems, a vendor of electronic voting services and equipment that was used in eight different states across the US.
What this document makes clear, however, is that Vladimir Putin's denials regarding the country's involvement in the US elections are not believed by the NSA officials.
While it's not clear just how successful the Russians were in their efforts via this particular hack, as well as whether it had a direct influence on Trump's victory or not, it's enough to create a lot of doubt over the entire voting process.
Who is Winner?
Reality Leigh Winner is just 25 years old and is a former linguist in the US Air Force, speaking Farsi, Pashto and Dari. She is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, which is assigned to a US government facility in Georgia and has been working at the facility since February with a top-secret clearance.
According to the FBI, following the document leak, Winner printed and removed the classified document around May 9 before emailing it to the Intercept, a publication that specifically deals with national security issues, particularly the Snowden documents.
Following the FBI's investigation, they managed to identify Winner as a suspect, and obtained and executed a search warrant at her residence. Winner admitted intentionally identifying and printing classified intelligence, removing it and emailing it to the news outlet. The Intercept claims to now know the identity of the source since the document was provided anonymously.