NSA Chief: Potential Russian Hacking of U.S. Elections a Concern

Sept. 13, 2016, 5:18 PM UTC / Updated Sept. 13, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

By Jim Miklaszewski and Halimah Abdullah

The head of the National Security Agency said Tuesday that the potential for Russia to harm the U.S. electoral process in the upcoming general election is a concern.

Cybersecurity officials have become increasingly worried about the issue in the wake of revelations that Russia-based hackers were behind two recent hacking attempts into state voter registration databases.

One incident included stealing information from roughly 200,000 Illinois voting records. In another attempt in Arizona, cyber criminals used malware to try and breach voting records, forcing state officials to disable online voting registration for nine days as they investigated the unsuccessful hacking.

At least one official told NBC News recently that Russian intelligence agencies were part of the hacking attempts. Several other officials told NBC News that they haven’t confirmed the Russian government’s involvement, but remain concerned.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., asked about the possibility that Russia “could somehow harm the electoral process” in his state and “disrupt the voting results in the upcoming election.”

Admiral Mike Rogers, head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, spoke about the disparate structure with some states voting manually and others electronically.

“But is it a concern?” McCain asked.

“Oh, yes sir,” Rogers responded.

Neither Rogers nor Marcel Lettre, the principal deputy under secretary for intelligence at the Defense Department, would provide any specifics about the recent online intrusions in Arizona, citing the ongoing investigation.

And neither would say whether the cyber targeting was from a foreign nation state or not.

The FBI and DHS have an “aggressive” investigation underway, Lettre said.

While the current voter registration-related hacks are not currently considered a national security threat, there has been some conversation about elevating cyber attacks against U.S. state and federal electoral facilities to that level, officials said.

Rogers also acknowledged that ISIS continues to plan attacks on the United States.

The terror group “is the most adaptive target I have ever worked in 35 years as an intelligence professional,” Rogers said.

Jim Miklaszewski

Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.

In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.

Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.

Halimah Abdullah

Halimah Abdullah is a digital editor and writer for NBC News and is responsible for reporting, writing, editing and web producing federal policy news for NBCNews.com. Prior to joining the site in April 2015, Abdullah worked at CNN.com, where she reported, edited and web produced stories on federal politics and policy. In that role, Abdullah was responsible for helping cover Congress, the White House, federal agencies, and national political races.

A veteran politics and policy reporter and editor, Abdullah has worked for Bloomberg Government, McClatchy Newspapers' Washington Bureau, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Newsday, and the Dallas Morning News. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times and TODAY.com, among other publications. Her journalism and creative writing have won awards, been published in several anthologies, and earned her invitations to attend several writing colonies. Abdullah is also a writing professor who has taught at the University of Maryland and the University of the District of Columbia and John Jay College and Brooklyn College in New York.

Abdullah lives in the Washington D.C. metro area.

Courtney Kube contributed.