US Homeland Security Undersecretary for National Protection and Programs Christopher Krebs explained that hacking attempts against US voter registration data, unfairly blamed on Russia are often work of criminals seeking to gain personal information. This was expressed during a congressional hearing on Wednesday
“It’s not always Russia and that’s one of the unfortunate aspects of the climate right now is that every time you see some sort of disruption, whether it’s intentional, malicious, accidental, everyone is jumping to the conclusion of it’s Russia,” Krebs added
Krebs noted that voter databases that were allegedly targeted by Russian hackers in the 2016 US presidential election are also targeted by criminals seeking information on individual voters.
A lawmaker’s inquiry on hacking in the US state of Arizona prompted the speech.
“For Arizona, it’s one of the more challenging situations because it wasn’t necessarily related directly to Russian activity,” Krebs said.
Krebs also stressed that the US intelligence community has found no evidence of Russian hacking of November’s midterm elections, in which voters will choose the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.