WASHINGTON ��The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is urging state and local election officials to seek assistance from the federal government to fend off cyberattacks that could be used to manipulate the results of the presidential election.
The agency is ready to provide any assistance to help states secure their systems, Jeh Johnson, the secretary of homeland security, said in a statement Saturday. Threats are rising that criminals will use cyberattacks to try to disrupt the administration of U.S. elections, the agency said.
"These challenges aren't just in the future �� they are here today," Johnson said in the statement. "In recent months, malicious cyber-actors have been scanning a large number of state systems, which could be a preamble to attempted intrusions. In a few cases, we have determined that malicious actors gained access to state voting-related systems."
Johnson's statement is in response to a Sept. 28 letter from the top Democrats and Republicans in Congress to the National Association of State Election Directors, urging states to take advantage of public resources available to help them secure their systems.
Johnson said that the agency isn't aware of any manipulation of data and that so far, 21 states have asked the department for help.
"We hope to see more," he said.
The FBI has been investigating cyberattacks on at least two state election boards, one of which resulted in data being stolen, the bureau said recently. Most of the data was stolen from one state's board of elections website in July, while an attempt to hack into the election system of another state was made in August, according to the bureau, which didn't identify the states involved.
