Iranian hackers have "gained access" to the United States (US) 2020 election results website. But later on, the US military successfully prevented these cyber attackers from potentially defacing the site to raise doubts about the polls, officials disclosed on Monday, Apr. 24.
The US military revealed the undisclosed hacking incident amid the 2020 US elections in a recent RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.
HERNDON, VA - MARCH 03: Voters fill in their ballots for the Democratic presidential primary election at a polling place in Armstrong Elementary School on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020 in Herndon, Virginia. 1,357 Democratic delegates are at stake as voters cast their ballots in 14 states and American Samoa on what is known as Super Tuesday.
Iran Hackers 'Gained Access' to US 2020 Election Results Website
According to a report by the Washington Post, the US military found out during the 2020 elections that some Iran-linked hackers have successfully accessed a website that primarily publishes the results of the polls.
The Record Media reports that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) conducted a foreign space mission during the 2020 elections. Upon doing so, CISA discovered that an Iranian hacking group named Pioneer Kitten had penetrated an election results website.
The executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, Eric Goldstein, revealed that the Iran-linked Pioneer Kittin "gained access to a city's local infrastructure that would be used to record the results of voting for the 2020 elections."
However, the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF) chief, Army Maj. Gen. William Hartman clarified that the website the hackers gained access to is not involved in voting the counts. So it never had any potential risk of altering the overall vote counting during the 2020 elections, making it appear that someone else had won.
Instead, Hartman says that the hackers could "make it look like the vote had been tampered with" even if it remained untouched in the first place. The cybercriminals could crucially trigger doubts about the results by simply defacing the election website.
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PLAINVIEW, NEW YORK - OCTOBER 24: Residents wait in line for the opening of an early voting location at the Mid-Island Y Jewish Community Center on October 24, 2020 in Plainview, New York. Polling stations in New York State opened today for early voting and will remain open until November 1.
US Military Successfully Prevented Potential Attack on Results
Given that, the military officials kicked out the Iran-linked hackers from the local government website before it disrupted the results.
To do so, the CISA reached out to the CNMF after discovering that hackers had access to the election website. From there, the latter carried out "cyber operations" to ditch the hacking group from the network.
As per CNN, Hartman revealed during the RSA conference that they also ensured that the cybercriminals would no longer have access to the system, according
Hartman told reporters during the conference that they "were able to go out and remediate the access that they had in these networks." And as such, it prevented the Iranian hackers from defacing the website, which could potentially raise doubts about the results of the 2020 US elections.
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