Ukraine Computer Involved In Tennessee Elections Attack

Talking Points Memo

Investigators found evidence of a “malicious intrusion” into a Tennessee county’s elections website from a computer in Ukraine during a concerted cyberattack, which likely caused the site to crash just as it was reporting vote totals in this month’s primary.

Cyber-security experts hired by Knox County to analyze the so-called “denial of service” cyberattack, said Friday that “a suspiciously large number of foreign countries” accessed the site as votes were being reported on May 1.

That intense activity was among the likely causes of the crash, according to the report by Sword & Shield Enterprise Security.

“Given the circumstantial evidence_especially the simultaneous proven malicious intrusion from a Ukraine IP address_I think it is reasonable to at least hypothesize that it was an intended event,” David Ball, the county’s deputy director of information technology, added in an email to The Associated Press.

County officials said no voting data was affected, but the site was down for an hour after the polls closed, causing confusion before technicians fixed the problem.

The vulnerability identified by Sword & Shield has been fixed and additional safeguards are now in place, said Ball.

The election results, to be officially certified later this month, left Glenn Jacobs, also known as the pro wrestler Kane, ahead by 17 votes in the Republican primary for Knox County’s mayor.

Investigators said it’s impossible to prove just where the so-called “denial of service” attack originated from, since the county can’t store all the “packet data” needed to identify the source.

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