Hacking efforts aimed at influencing the November presidential election by Russian military intelligence officials were more widespread than previously reported and are ongoing, according to the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
In an interview with USA Today, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, said he has been pushing for intelligence agencies to declassify the names of states recently targeted by Russian hackers before 2018, when voters will go to the polls for midterm elections.
“I don’t believe they got into changing actual voting outcomes,” Warner told USA Today. “But the extent of the attacks is much broader than has been reported so far. … None of these actions from the Russians stopped on Election Day.”
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Warner's comments came in the wake of a report from The Intercept that detailed a top-secret National Security Agency analysis of Russian attempts to meddle in the election. The Justice Department on Monday announced that federal contractor Reality Winner, 25, had been arrested and charged in connection with the leak.
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In the analysis, the NSA said Russian military intelligence “executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials” in the run-up to the election, The Intercept reported.
>> Related: What is spear-phishing, Russia’s alleged voter hacking technique?
Warner told USA Today that despite the attempted hacks, Russia was unable to change voting outcomes.
The Kremlin on Tuesday denied involvement in the reported cyberattacks.
U.S. intelligence officials said in January with “high confidence” that Russia meddled in the November election in favor of President Donald Trump. The report sparked worries of collusion between Trump and his advisers and Russian officials. Authorities have not provided any evidence that they worked together.
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