14 DAY TRIAL // The Russian meddling into the US elections last fall seems to have been a lot more extensive than previously thought, with hackers attacking the vote systems in 39 states.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, the hackers attacked twice as many states than was previously thought, namely 39. They accessed campaign finance databases in at least one state and tried to delete or alter the data in Illinois.
Officials aware of the incident don't believe the attackers actually changed any of the results, but the situation was dire enough that President Obama contacted the Kremlin and complained about it.
Russia's involvement in the US elections has been known for months now, with Obama actually imposing sanctions on Russia following the November elections. There are multiple investigations into the situation, including some that regard Donald Trump's team.
Unheeded warnings
Reports based on leaked NSA classified documents published by the Intercept indicated that Russian intelligence agents tried and succeeded in hacking into vote systems, breaching the voter database. Original reports indicate that they tried to take over computers of 122 local election officials ahead of the big day.
Despite of warnings from Homeland Security that US swing states should do more to protect their voting systems from attacks, many brushed the advice aside. Homeland went as far as to declare voting machines as "critical infrastructure" in order to allow the agency to give assistance to state or local officials should they request it.
For its part, the Kremlin has denied any allegations of involvement in the US elections. Vladimir Putin has admitted recently, however, that hackers loyal to Russia could have, in theory, attacked and hacked the US elections.
On top of this direct involvement into last fall's vote, it has been revealed that hackers of Fancy Bear, a group that is believed to have strong ties to Kremlin, has hacked the email accounts of multiple members of the Democratic National Committee, exposing emails online.