Open Hearing: Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Elections

[Senate Hearing 115-92] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 115-92 RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTIONS ======================================================================= HEARING BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2017 __________ Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Intelligence [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov _________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 26-125 PDF WASHINGTON : 2017 ____________________________________________________________________ For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Internet:bookstore.gpo.gov. Phone:toll free (866)512-1800;DC area (202)512-1800 Fax:(202) 512-2104 Mail:Stop IDCC,Washington,DC 20402-001 SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE [Established by S. Res. 400, 94th Cong., 2d Sess.] RICHARD BURR, North Carolina, Chairman MARK R. WARNER, Virginia, Vice Chairman JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California MARCO RUBIO, Florida RON WYDEN, Oregon SUSAN COLLINS, Maine MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico ROY BLUNT, Missouri ANGUS KING, Maine JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia TOM COTTON, Arkansas KAMALA HARRIS, California JOHN CORNYN, Texas MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky, Ex Officio CHUCK SCHUMER, New York, Ex Officio JOHN McCAIN, Arizona, Ex Officio JACK REED, Rhode Island, Ex Officio ---------- Chris Joyner, Staff Director Michael Casey, Minority Staff Director Kelsey Stroud Bailey, Chief Clerk CONTENTS ---------- JUNE 21, 2017 OPENING STATEMENTS Burr, Hon. Richard, Chairman, a U.S. Senator from North Carolina. 1 Warner, Hon. Mark R., Vice Chairman, a U.S. Senator from Virginia 2 WITNESSES Liles, Sam, Acting Director, Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Cyber Division, Department of Homeland Security................ 4 Manfra, Jeanette, Undersecretary of Homeland Security, and Acting Director, National Protection and Programs Directorate......... 6 Prepared statement........................................... 8 Priestap, Bill, Assistant Director, Counterintelligence Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation................................ 15 Prepared statement........................................... 16 Lawson, Connie, Indiana Secretary of State and President-Elect, National Association of Secretaries of State................... 48 Prepared statement........................................... 50 Haas, Michael, Midwest Regional Representative, National Association of State Election Directors........................ 59 Prepared statement........................................... 62 Sandvoss, Steve, Executive Director, Illinois State Board of Elections...................................................... 68 Prepared statement........................................... 70 Halderman, J. Alex, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan............................ 72 Prepared statement........................................... 74 SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Phishing email received by Billy Rinehart of DNC................. 37 Report titled ``Securing Elections from Foreign Interference'' submitted by Senator Warner.................................... 96 Questions for the record......................................... 134 RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN THE 2016 U.S. ELECTIONS ---------- WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2017 U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:32 a.m. in Room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard Burr (Chairman of the Committee) presiding. Committee Members Present: Senators Burr, Warner, Risch, Rubio, Collins, Blunt, Lankford, Cotton, Cornyn, Feinstein, Wyden, Heinrich, King, Manchin, Harris, and Reed. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD BURR, CHAIRMAN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM NORTH CAROLINA Chairman Burr. I'd like to call the hearing to order. Today the Committee convenes its sixth open hearing of 2017, to further examine Russia's interference in the 2016 elections. This is yet another opportunity for the Committee and the American people to drill down on this vitally important topic. In 2016, a hostile foreign power reached down to the State and local levels to touch voter data. It employed relatively sophisticated cyber tools and capabilities and helped Moscow to potentially build detailed knowledge of how our elections work. It was also another example of Russian efforts to interfere into a democracy with the goal of undermining our system. In 2016, we were woefully unprepared to defend and respond and I'm hopeful that we will not be caught flatfooted again. Our witnesses are here to tell us more about what happened in 2016, what that tells us about Russian intentions, and what we should expect in 2018 and 2020. I'm deeply concerned that if we do not work in lockstep with the states to secure our elections, we could be here in two or four years talking about a much worse crisis. The hearing will feature two panels. The first panel will include expert witnesses from DHS and FBI to discuss Russian intervention in 2016 elections and U.S. government efforts to mitigate the threat. The second panel will include witnesses from the Illinois State Board of Elections, the National Association of State Election Directors, the National Association of Secretaries of States, and an expert on election security to give us their on-the-ground perspective on how Federal resources might be brought to bear on this very important issue. For our first panel, I'd like to welcome our witnesses today: Dr. Samuel Liles, Acting Director of Cyber Division within the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security; Jeanette Manfra, Acting Deputy Under Secretary, National Protection and Programs Directorate, also at DHS. And Jeanette, I think I told you next time you came I did not want `Àcting'' in front of your name. So now I've publicly said that to everybody at DHS. Hopefully next time that will be removed. And Bill Priestap. Bill's the Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Division at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Bill, I want to thank you for the help that you have personally provided to the investigative staff of this Committee as we've worked through so far over five and a half months of our investigation into the 2016 elections. As you're well aware, this Committee is in the midst of a comprehensive investigation on the specific issue: the extent to which the Russian government under the direction of President Putin conducted intelligence activities, also known as Russian active measures, targeted at the 2016 U.S. elections. The intelligence community assesses that, while Russian influence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. State and local election boards, those systems were not involved in vote tallying. During the first panel, I would like to address the depth and the breadth of Russian government cyber activities during the 2016 election cycle, the efforts of the U.S. government to defend against these intrusions, and the steps that DHS and FBI are taking to preserve the foundation of our democracy's free and fair elections in 2018 and beyond. I thank all three of our first witnesses. I turn to the Vice Chairman. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARK WARNER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM VIRGINIA Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to the witnesses. And, Bill, thank you again for all the work you've done with us. We all know that in January the entire intelligence community reached the unanimous conclusion that Russia took extraordinary steps to intervene in our 2016 Presidential elections. Russia's interference in our elections in 2016 I believe was a watershed moment in our political history. This was one of the most significant events I think any of us on this dais will be asked to address in our time as Senators. And only with a robust and comprehensive response will we be able to protect our democratic processes from even more dramatic incursions in the future. Much of what the Russians did at this point, I think at least in this room, is--was well known: spreading fake news, flooding social media, hacking personal e-mails and leaking them for maximum political benefit. Without firing a shot and at minimal cost, Russia sowed chaos in our political system and undermined faith in our democratic process. And as we've heard from earlier witnesses, sometimes that was aided by certain candidates in terms of their comments about the legitimacy of our democratic processes. Less well understood, though, is the intelligence community's conclusion that they also secured and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. State and local electoral boards. Now, again, as the Chairman has said, there's no reason to doubt the validity of the vote totals in the 2016 election. However, DHS and the FBI have confirmed--and I'm going to come back to this repeatedly--only two intrusions into the voter registration databases, in both Arizona and Illinois, even though no data was modified or deleted in those two states. At the same time, we've seen published reports that literally dozens--I've seen one published report that actually said 39 states--were potentially attacked. Certainly it's good news that the attempts in 2016 did not change the results of that election. But the bad news is this will not be their last attempt. And I'm deeply concerned about the danger posed by future interference in our elections and attempts by Russia to undermine confidence in our whole electoral system. We saw Russian--we saw recently--and this was just not happening here, obviously--we saw recently Russian attempts to interfere in the elections in France. And I thank the Chairman that next week we'll be having a hearing on some of these Russian efforts in Europe. We can be sure that Russian hackers and trolls will continue to refine their tactics in the future, especially if there's no penalty for these malicious attacks. That's again, one reason I think that the Senate voted so overwhelmingly last week, and I thank all my colleagues for that 97-2 vote, to strengthen our sanctions on Russia. I hope that that action sends a strong message to Mr. Putin that there will be a heavy price to pay for attacks against the fundamental core of our democratic system. Make no mistake, it's likely that we'll see more of these attacks not just in America, but against our partners. I heard this morning coming in on the radio that the Russians are already actively engaged in the German election cycle, which takes place this fall. Now, some might say, ``Well, why the urgency?'' I can assure you, you know, we have elections in 2018, but in my home State of Virginia we have statewide elections this year. So this needs a sense of urgency. The American electoral election process, the machinery, the Election Day manpower, the actual counting and reporting, primarily is a local and State responsibility. And in many states, including my own, we have a very decentralized approach, which can be both a strength and a weakness. In Virginia, for instance, decentralization helps deter large-scale hacking or manipulation because our system is so diffuse. But Virginia localities use more than a dozen different types of voting machines, none of which are connected to the Internet while in use, but we have a number of machine- read machines, so that the tabulations actually could be broken into on an individual machine basis. All this makes large cyber attacks on electoral systems, because of the diffusion, more difficult. But it also makes maintaining consistent, coordinated cyber defenses more challenging as well. Furthermore, states may be vulnerable when it comes to the defense of voter registration and voter history databases. That's why I strongly believe that the threat requires us to harden our cyber defenses and to thoroughly educate the American public about the danger. Yesterday, I wrote to the Secretary of Homeland Security. I urged DHS to work closely with State and local election officials to disclose publicly--and I emphasize, publicly-- which states were targeted. Not to embarrass any states, but how can we put the American public on notice when we've only revealed two states, yet we have public reports that there are literally dozens? That makes absolutely no sense. I know it is the position of DHS that since the states were victims, it is their responsibility. But I cannot believe if this was an attack on physical infrastructure in a variety of states, there wouldn't be a more coordinated response. We are not making our country safer if we don't make sure that all Americans realize the breadth and the extent of what the Russians did in 2016 and, frankly, if we don't get our act together, what they will do in an even more dramatic form in 2018 and 2020. And candidly, the idea of this kind of bureaucratic ``Well, it's not my responsibility, not my job'' I don't believe is an acceptable decision. So, I'm going to hope from our witnesses, particularly our DHS witnesses, that we hear a plan on how we can get more information into the bloodstream, how we can make sure that we have better best practices, so that all states are doing what's needed. I'm not urging or suggesting that in any way the Federal Government intervenes in what is a local and State responsibility. But to not put all Americans on notice and to have the number of states that were hacked into or attempted to be hacked into still kept secret is just crazy in my mind. So, my hope is that we will get some answers. I do want to thank the fact that in January DHS did designate the Nation's electoral infrastructure as critical infrastructure. That's important. But if we call it critical infrastructure but then don't tell the public how many states were attacked or potentially how many could be attacked in the next cycle, I don't think we get to where we need to be. So, we're going to see more of this. This is the new normal. I appreciate the Chairman for holding this hearing and I'm going to look forward very much to getting my questions answered. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Thank you, Vice Chairman. With that, Dr. Liles, I understand you're going to go first. The floor is yours. STATEMENT OF SAM LILES, Ph.D., ACTING DIRECTOR, CYBER DIVISION, OFFICE OF INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYSIS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Dr. Liles. Chairman Burr, Ranking Member Warner, and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the invitation to be here. My name is Sam Liles. I represent the Cyber Analysis Division of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Our mission is to produce cyber-focused intelligence, information, and analysis, represent our operational partners like the NCCIC to the intelligence community, coordinate and collaborate on IC products, and share intelligence and information with our customers at the lowest classification possible. We are a team of dedicated analysts who take threats to the critical infrastructure of the United States seriously. I'd like to begin by clarifying and characterizing the threat we observed to the election infrastructure in the 2016 election. Prior to the election, we had no indication that adversaries or criminals were planning cyber operations against the U.S. election infrastructure that would change the outcome of the coming U.S. election. However, throughout spring and early summer 2016, we and others in the IC began to find indications that the Russian government was responsible for widely reported compromises and leaks of e-mails from U.S. political figures and institutions. As awareness of these activities grew, DHS began in August of 2016 to receive reports of cyber-enabled scanning and probing of election-related infrastructure in some states. From that point on, I&A began working to gather, analyze, and share additional information about the threat. I&A participated in red team events, looking at all possible scenarios, collaborated and co-authored production with other intelligence community members and the National Intelligence Council. We provided direct support to the Department's operational cyber center, the National Cyber Security and Communications Integration Center, and worked hand-in-hand with the State and local partners to share threat information related to their networks. By late September, we determined that Internet-connected election-related networks in 21 states were potentially targeted by Russian government cyber actors. It is important to note that none of these systems were involved in vote tallying. Our understanding of that targeting, augmented by further classified reporting, is that's still consistent with the scale and scope. This activity is best characterized as hackers attempting to use commonly available cyber tools to exploit known system vulnerabilities. The vast majority of the activity we observed was indicative of simple scanning for vulnerabilities, analogous to somebody walking down the street and looking to see if you are home. A small number of systems were unsuccessfully exploited, as though somebody had rattled the doorknob but was unable to get in, so to speak. Finally, a small number of the networks were successfully exploited. They made it through the door. Based on the activity we observed, DHS made a series of assessments. We started out with, we had no indication prior to the election that adversaries were planning cyber operations against election infrastructure that would change the outcome of the 2016 election. We also assessed that multiple checks and redundancies in U.S. election infrastructures, including diversity of systems, non-Internet-connected voting machines, pre-election testing, and processes for media, campaign, and election officials to check, audit, and validate the results, all these made it likely that cyber manipulation of the U.S. election systems intended to change the outcome of the national election would be detected. We also, finally, assessed that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying. While we continue to evaluate any and all new available information, DHS has not altered any of these prior assessments. Having characterized the threat as we observed it, I'll stop there to allow my NPPD colleague Jeanette Manfra to talk more about how DHS is working with election systems to enhance security and resiliency. I look forward to answering your questions. Chairman Burr. Thank you. Ms. Manfra. STATEMENT OF JEANETTE MANFRA, ACTING DIRECTOR AND UNDER SECRETARY, NATIONAL PROTECTION AND PROGRAMS DIRECTORATE, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY Ms. Manfra. Thank you, sir. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, members of this Committee: thank you for today's opportunity to represent the men and women that serve in the Department of Homeland Security. Today I'm here to discuss the Department's mission to reduce and eliminate threats to the Nation's critical physical and cyber infrastructure, specifically as it relates to our election. Our Nation's cyber infrastructure is under constant attack. In 2016, we saw cyber operations directed against U.S. election infrastructure and political entities. As awareness of these activities grew, DHS and its partners provided actionable information and capabilities to help election officials identify and mitigate vulnerabilities on their networks. Actionable information led to detections of potentially malicious activity affecting Internet-connected election- related networks, potentially targeted by Russian cyber actors in multiple states. When we became aware of detected activity, we worked with the affected entity to understand if a successful intrusion had in fact occurred. Many of these detections represented potentially malicious vulnerability scanning activity, not successful intrusions. This activity, in partnership with these potential victims and targets, enhanced our situational awareness of the threat and further informed our engagement with State and local election officials across the country. Given the vital role that elections have in a free and democratic society, on January 26 of this year the former Secretary of Homeland Security established election infrastructure as a critical infrastructure sub-sector. As such, DHS is leading Federal efforts to partner with State and local election officials, as well as private sector vendors, to formalize the prioritization of voluntary security-related assistance and to ensure that we have the communications channels and protocols, as Senator Warner discussed, to ensure that election officials receive information in a timely manner and that we understand how to jointly respond to incidents. Election infrastructure now receives cybersecurity and infrastructure protection assistance similar to what is provided to other critical infrastructure, such as financial institutions and electric utilities. Our election system is run by State and local governments in thousands of jurisdictions across the country. Importantly, State and local officials have already been working individually and collectively to reduce risks and ensure the integrity of their elections. As threat actors become increasingly sophisticated, DHS stands in partnership to support their efforts. Safeguarding and securing cyber space is a core mission at DHS. Through our National Cybersecurity and Communications Center, or NCCC, DHS assists State and local customers such as election officials as part of our daily operations. Such assistance is completely voluntary. It does not entail regulation or Federal oversight. Our role is limited to support. In this role, we offer three types of assistance: assessments, information, and incident response. For the most part, DHS has offered two kinds of assistance to State and local officials: first, the cyber hygiene service for Internet- facing systems provides a recurring report identifying vulnerabilities and mitigation recommendations. Second, our cybersecurity experts can go on site to conduct risk and vulnerability assessments and provide recommendations to the owners of those systems for how best to reduce the risk to their networks. DHS continues to share actionable information on cyber threats and incidents through multiple means. For example, we publish best practices for securing voter registration databases and addressing potential threats to election systems. We share cyber threat indicators and other analysis that network defenders can use to secure their systems. We partner with the multistate Information Sharing and Analysis Center to provide threat and vulnerability information to State and local officials. This organization is partially grant-funded by DHS and has representatives that sit on our NCCC floor and can interact with our analysts and operators on a 24/7 basis. They can also receive information through our field-based personnel stationed throughout the country and in partnership with the FBI. Finally, we provide incident response assistance at request to help State and local officials identify and remediate any possible cyber incidents. In the case of an attempted compromise affecting election infrastructure, we will share that technical information with other states to assist their ability to defend their own systems from similar malicious activity. Moving forward, we must recognize that the nature of risk facing our election infrastructure will continue to evolve. With the establishment of an election infrastructure subsector, DHS is working with stakeholders to establish these appropriate coordinating councils and our mechanisms to engage with them. These will formalize our mechanisms for collaboration and ensure long-term sustainability of this partnership. We will lead the Federal efforts to support election officials with security and resilience efforts. Before closing, I want to reiterate that we do have confidence in the overall integrity of our electoral system because our voting infrastructure is fundamentally resilient. It is diverse, subject to local control, and has many checks and balances built in. As the risk environment evolves, the Department will continue to support State and local partners by providing information and offering assistance. Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to any questions. [The prepared statement of Ms. Manfra follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Burr. Thank you very much. Mr. Priestap. STATEMENT OF BILL PRIESTAP, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, COUNTERINTELLIGENCE DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION Mr. Priestap. Good morning. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, and members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. My statement for the record has been submitted. And so, rather than restating it, I'd like to step back and provide you a description of the broader threat as I see it. My understanding begins by asking one question: What does Russia want? As you well know, during the Cold War the Soviet Union was one of the world's two great powers. However, in the early 1990's it collapsed and lost power, stature, and much territory. In a 2005 speech, Vladimir Putin referred to this as a major catastrophe. The Soviet Union's collapse left the U.S. as the sole superpower. Since then, Russia has substantially rebuilt, but it hasn't been able to fully regain its former status or its former territory. The U.S. is too strong and has too many alliances for Russia to want a military conflict with us. Therefore, hoping to regain its prior stature, Russia has decided to try to weaken us and our allies. One of the ways Russia has sought to do this is by influence, rather than brute force. Some people refer to Russia's activity in this regard as information warfare, because it is information that Russia uses as a weapon. In regards to our most recent Presidential election, Russia used information to try to undermine the legitimacy of our election process. Russia sought to do this in a simple manner. They collected information via computer intrusions and via their intelligence officers and they selectively disseminated e-mails they hoped would disparage certain political figures and shed unflattering light on political processes. They also pushed fake news and propaganda, and they used online amplifiers to spread the information to as many people as possible. One of their primary goals was to sow discord and undermine a key democratic principle, free and fair elections. In summary, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss Russia's election influence efforts. But I hope the American people will keep in mind that Russia's overall aim is to restore its relative power and prestige by eroding democratic values. In other words, its election-related activity wasn't a one-time event. Russia will continue to pose an influence threat. I look forward to your questions. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Mr. Priestap follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Burr. Thank you very much to all of our witnesses. For members, we will proceed by seniority for recognition for up to five minutes, and the Chairman will tell you when you have used all your time if you proceed that far. The Chair would recognize himself for five minutes. Yes or no, to all three of you. Most important question: Do you have any evidence that the votes themselves were changed in any way in the 2016 Presidential election? Dr. Liles. Dr. Liles. No, sir. There was no detected change in the vote. Chairman Burr. Ms. Manfra. Ms. Manfra. No, sir. Chairman Burr. Mr. Priestap. Mr. Priestap. No, sir. Chairman Burr. Bill, to you. This adversary is determined. They're aggressive and they're getting more sophisticated by the day. The diversity of our election system is a strength, but the intrusions into State systems also show that Moscow is willing to put considerable resources towards an unclear result. In 2016, we saw voter data stolen. How could Moscow potentially use that data? Mr. Priestap. They could use the data in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, in this setting I can't go into all of them. First of all, I think they took the data to understand what it consisted of, what's there, so that they can in effect better understand and plan accordingly. And when I say ``plan accordingly,'' plan accordingly in regards to possibly impacting future elections and/or targeting of particular individuals, but also by knowing what's there and studying it they can determine if it's it something they can manipulate or not, possibly, going forward. And there's a couple of other things that wouldn't be appropriate in this setting as well. Chairman Burr. To any of you: You've heard the Vice Chairman talk about his frustration about publicly talking about how many states. Can you tell the American people why you can't disclose which states and the numbers? I'll turn to Ms. Manfra first. Ms. Manfra. Thank you for the question, sir. There are-- through the long history that the Department has in working with the private sector and State and local on critical infrastructure and cybersecurity issues, we believe it is important to protect the confidentiality that we have and the trust that we have with that community. So when the entity is a victim of a cyber incident, we believe very strongly in protecting the information around that victim. That being said, what we can do is take the technical information that we learn from the engagement with that victim and anonymize it so it is not identified as to what that entity or individual is. We can take all the technical information and turn that around and share that broadly with whether it's the affected sector or broadly across the entire country. And we have multiple mechanisms for sharing that. But we believe that this has been a very important key to our success in developing trusted relationships across all of these 16 critical infrastructure sectors. Chairman Burr. Are we prepared today to say publicly how many states were targeted? Ms. Manfra. We, as of right now, we have evidence of 21 states, election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted. Chairman Burr. But in no case were actual vote tallies altered in any way, shape, or form? Ms. Manfra. That is correct. Chairman Burr. How did the French respond to the Russian involvement in the French elections a month ago? Is that something we followed, the Bureau? Bill? Mr. Priestap. Sir, From the Bureau's standpoint, it's something we followed from afar. We did have engagement with French officials, but I'm just not at liberty to go into what those consisted of. Chairman Burr. Okay. We've talked about last year, Russia's intent, their target. Let's talk about next year. Let's talk about the 2017 elections in Virginia. Let's talk about the 2018 elections, Congressional and gubernatorial elections. What are we doing to prepare ourselves this November and next November? Ms. Manfra. Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. As we noted, we are taking this threat very seriously, and part of that is identifying this community as a critical infrastructure subsector. That's allowed us to prioritize and formalize the engagement with them. Similar to the 2016 elections, we are identifying additional resources, prioritizing our engagement with them through information-sharing products, identifying, in partnership again with the State and local community, those communication protocols--how do we ensure that we can declassify information quickly should we need to and get it to the individuals that need it. We also have committed to working with State and local officials on incident response playbooks. So how do they understand where to engage with us, where do we engage with them, and how do we--are we able to bring the entire resources of the Federal Government to bear in helping the State and local officials secure their election systems? Chairman Burr. Great. Vice Chairman. Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you for the answer at 21. 21 states is almost half the country. We've seen reports that were even higher. I concur with the Chairman that the vote totals were not changed. But can you explain to me how we're made safer by keeping the identity of 19 of those states secret from the public, since Arizona and Illinois have acknowledged they were attacked? Dr. Liles. Well, sir, I'd bring it back to the earlier points you made about the future elections. One of the key pieces for us within I&A is our ability to work with our partners because of how our collection mechanisms work. It's built on a high level of trust---- Vice Chairman Warner. If this was water systems or power systems, would the public be safer by not knowing that their water system or power system in their respective State was attacked? Ms. Manfra. Sir, I can--for other sectors we apply the same principles. When we do have a victim of an incident in the electric sector or the water sector, we do keep the name of that entity confidential. Some of these sectors do have breach reporting requirements that requires the victims---- Vice Chairman Warner. Are all 21 of the states that were attacked, are they aware they were attacked? Ms. Manfra. All of the system owners within those states are aware of the targeting, yes, sir. Vice Chairman Warner. At the State level, you could have local registrars and other local officials that there may have been an attempt to penetrate at the State level and you may have local registrars in the respective states that would not even know that their State had been the subject of Russian activities? Ms. Manfra. We are currently working with State election officials to ensure communication between the local and the State officials. Vice Chairman Warner. But at this moment in time, there may be a number of State and local election officials that don't know their states were targeted in 2016, is that right? Ms. Manfra. The owners of the systems that were targeted do know that they were targeted---- Vice Chairman Warner. The owners may know, but because we have a decentralized system many local elective--I just---- Ms. Manfra. I cannot---- Vice Chairman Warner [continuing]. Fundamentally disagree. I understand the notion of victimization. Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. Vice Chairman Warner. But I do not believe our country is made safer by holding this information back from the American public. I have no interest in trying to embarrass any State, but if this--because we've seen this for too long in cyber, we've seen it in the financial industry, and others, where people simply try to sweep this under the rug and assume they'll go along their way. When we're talking about--I go back to Dr. Liles' initial comments. We had no idea--we had no ability to predict this beforehand. We had 21 states that were tapped. We've got two that have come forward. While no election results were changed, we do know there were a number of states--perhaps you'll answer this: How many states did the Russians actually exfiltrate data, such as voter registration lists? Ms. Manfra. I'd prefer not to go into those details in this forum, sir. I can tell you that we're tracking 21 states that were targeted---- Vice Chairman Warner. Do the states who had their data exfiltrated by the Russians--are they aware of that? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. Vice Chairman Warner. And is there any coordinated response on how we're going to prevent this going forward? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. Vice Chairman Warner. How do we make sure, if states are not willing to acknowledge that they had vulnerabilities, that they were subject to attack--again, we're in a brave new world here, and I understand your position. I'm not trying to--I'm very frustrated, but I'm not--I get this notion. But I think we need a re-examination of this policy. You know, the designation by former Secretary Johnson as critical infrastructure, what does that change in terms of how our operations are going forward? By that designation in January, I appreciated it, but what does that really mean in practical terms, in terms of assistance or information sharing? Ms. Manfra. What it means, it means three things, sir. The first is a statement that we do recognize that these systems are critical to the functioning of American life, and so that is an important statement. The second is that it formalizes and sustains the Department's prioritization of engagement with this community. And the last is, it provides a particular protection for sharing of information, in particular with vendors within the election community, that allows us to have conversations to discuss vulnerabilities with potential systems, that we would not have to disclose. Vice Chairman Warner. I talked to Secretary Kelly last week, and I hope you'll take this, at least this Senator's message, back to him. I would like us to get more information. What I have heard today is that, there were 21 states. I appreciate that information, but within those 21 states I have no guarantee that local election officials are aware that their State system may have been attacked, number one. Number two, we don't know how many states actually had exfiltration. And the final question is, have you seen any stoppage of the Russian activities after the election? Or are they continuing to ping and try to feel out our various election systems? Ms. Manfra. On the first two questions, sir, we will be happy to get back to you. I spoke to the Secretary this morning and look forward to responding to your letter. On the third question, I'll defer to the FBI. Mr. Priestap. Vice Chairman, I just can't comment on our pending investigations related to the cyber---- Vice Chairman Warner. You can't say whether the--so, should the public take away a sense of confidence that the Russians have completely stopped, as of November of 2016, trying to interfere or tap into our electoral systems? Is that what you're saying? Mr. Priestap. That's not what I'm saying, sir. I believe the Russians will absolutely continue to try to conduct influence operations in the U.S., which will include cyber intrusions. Vice Chairman Warner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Burr. Thank you, Vice Chairman. To DHS and to the Bureau, a quick question; and if you can't answer it, please go back and get us an answer. Would your agency be opposed to the Chair and Vice Chair sending a letter to the 19 states that have not been publicly disclosed, a classified letter, asking them if they would consider publicly disclosing that they were a target of the last election? Mr. Priestap. Sir, I'd be happy to take that question back to my organization, but I would just add that the role your Committee is playing in regards to highlighting the Russians' aims and activities I think is critically important for this country. The Bureau is just trying to balance what, we'll call it the messaging end of that, with doing things that hopefully don't impact what we can learn through our investigations. I know it's a fine balance, but the bottom line is you play a key role in raising awareness of that, and I thank you. Chairman Burr. Fair concern, and if both of you would just go back and get back with us, we'll proceed from there. Senator Risch. Senator Risch. Thank you much. So that the American people can have solid confidence in what you've done, and thank you for what you've done, could you give the American people an idea--if you feel the numbers are classified and that sort of thing, you don't have to go into it--but the number of people that were involved on DHS and the FBI in this investigation? Can you give us a general idea about that? Whichever one of you want to take that question. Ms. Manfra. Ms. Manfra. From a DHS perspective, we did amass quite a few resources both from our intelligence and analysis and our operations analysis. To put a number on it is somewhat challenging but, you know---- Senator Risch. Would you say it was substantial? Ms. Manfra. It was a substantial level of effort, yes, sir. Senator Risch. You're confident that you got where you wanted to go when you set out to make this investigation? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. One of our key priorities was developing relationships with that community and getting information out, whether it was to the specific victims or broader indicators that we could share. We accomplished that. We held multiple sessions. We sent over 800 indicators to the community, and so we do believe that we accomplished that. We don't want to let that down at all. We want to continue that level of effort and we intend to continue it. Senator Risch. And I'm focusing on not what you did after you got the information, but how you got the information. You're confident you got what you needed to appropriately advise everyone on this, what was going on? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. Yes, we did. Senator Risch. Mr. Priestap. Mr. Priestap. The FBI considered this a very grave threat and so we dedicated substantial resources to this effort as well. Senator Risch. Okay. Thank you. To both of you, both agencies again: Everyone in this Committee knows the specificity and identity of the Russian agencies involved. Are you comfortable in identifying them here today, or do you feel--still feel that's classified? Mr. Priestap. Yeah. Other than what was mentioned in the unclassified version of the intelligence community assessment, I'd rather not go into any of those details. Senator Risch. Were there any of those agencies identified, any of the Russian intelligence agencies, identified in that? Mr. Priestap. It's my understanding that GRU was identified. Senator Risch. Homeland Security, same answer? Dr. Liles. Yes, sir. Senator Risch. Okay. Thank you much. Let me ask this question. And I come at this from a little different perspective, and I think the American people have the right to know this. From all the work that either of your agencies did, all the people involved, all the digging you did through what the Russians had done and their attempts, did you find any evidence, direct or circumstantial, to any degree, down to a scintilla of evidence, that any U.S. person colluded with, assisted, or communicated with the Russians in their efforts? Mr. Priestap. Mr. Priestap. I'm sorry, I just can't comment on that today. That falls under the Special Counsel's purview and I have to defer to him. Senator Risch. Are you aware of any such evidence? Mr. Priestap. And I'm sorry, sir, I just can't comment on that. Senator Risch. Ms. Manfra. Ms. Manfra. Sorry, sir. I cannot also comment on that. Senator Risch. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Burr. Senator Feinstein. Senator Feinstein. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Candidly, I'm very disappointed by the testimony. I mean, we have learned a great deal and the public has learned a great deal. And it seems to me we have to deal with what we've learned. Mr. Priestap, is that correct? You have said, and I think quite pointedly, that Russia has decided to weaken us through covert influence rather than brute force. And I think that's a correct assessment, and I thank you for having the courage to make it. Here's a question. To the best of the FBI's knowledge, have they conducted covert influence in prior election campaigns in the United States? If so, when, what and how? Mr. Priestap. Yes, absolutely they've conducted influence operations in the past. What made this one different in many regards was of course the degree and then with what you can do through electronic systems today. When they did it in the past, it was doing things like trying to put in biased or half-true stories, getting stories like that into the press or pamphlets that people would read, so on and so forth. The Internet has allowed Russia to do so much more today than they've ever been able to do in the past. Senator Feinstein. So you're saying prior campaigns were essentially developed to influence one campaign above another, to denigrate a candidate if she was elected and to support another candidate subtly? Mr. Priestap. Yeah, I'm saying that Russia, for years, has conducted influence operations targeting our elections, yes. Senator Feinstein. Equal to this one? Mr. Priestap. Not equal to this one. No, ma'am. Senator Feinstein. Okay, here we go. What made this one different? Mr. Priestap. Again, I think the scale, the scale and the aggressiveness of the effort, in my opinion, made this one different. And again, it's because of the electronic infrastructure, the Internet, what have you, today that allowed Russia to do things that in the past they weren't able to do. Senator Feinstein. Would you say that this effort was tailored to achieve certain goals? Mr. Priestap. Absolutely. Senator Feinstein. And what would those goals have been? Mr. Priestap. I think the primary goal in my mind was to sow discord and to try to delegitimize our free and fair election process. I also think another of their goals, which the entire United States intelligence community stands behind, was to denigrate Secretary Clinton and to try to help then-- current President, Trump. Senator Feinstein. Have they done this in prior elections in which they've been involved? Mr. Priestap. Have they---- Senator Feinstein. Denigrated a specific candidate and-or tried to help another candidate? Mr. Priestap. Yes, ma'am, they have. Senator Feinstein. And which elections were those? Mr. Priestap. Oh--I'm sorry. I know there--I'm sorry, I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but even though--all the way through the Cold War, up to our most recent election, in my opinion, they have tried to influence all of our elections since then, and this is a common practice. Senator Feinstein. Have they ever targeted what is admitted here today to be 21 states? Mr. Priestap. If they have, I am not aware of that. That's a--that scale is different than what I'm aware of what they tried to do in the past. So again, the scale and aggressiveness here separates this from their previous activity. Senator Feinstein. Has the FBI looked at how those states were targeted? Mr. Priestap. Absolutely, ma'am. Senator Feinstein. And what is your finding? Mr. Priestap. We have a number of investigations open in regards to that. In this setting, because they're all still pending investigations, I'd rather not go into those details. The other thing I'd ask you to keep in mind is that we continue to learn things. So, there was some activity we were looking at prior to the election. It's not like when the election was finished our investigation stopped. So as we learn more, we share more. Senator Feinstein. Do you know if it's the intent of the FBI to make this information public at some point? Mr. Priestap. I think this gets back to an issue the Vice Chairman raised, and I guess I want to be clear on my position on it. I think it is critically important to raise awareness about Russia's aims to undermine our democracy, and then their tradecraft and how they do it. My organization--part of understanding that tradecraft is conducting our investigations where we learn more and more about tradecraft. So we try to balance, what do we need to provide to partners so they can best protect themselves versus not interrupting our investigations if the information were to be made public. Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. Mr. Priestap. A balancing act. Senator Feinstein. My time is up. Thank you Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator Feinstein. The Vice Chairman and I have already decided that we're going to invite the Bureau in for a classified briefing to update all members on the open investigations and any that we see that might warrant, on their minds, an opening of a new investigation. In addition, let me remind members that one of the mandates of our investigation is that we will, at the end of this, work with the Bureau and other appropriate agencies to make a public report in as great a public detail as we can our findings on Russia's involvement in our election. So, it is the intent of the Chair, at least, to make sure that as much as we can declassify, it's done and the public gets a true understanding when we put out a final report. Senator Rubio. Senator Rubio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And that's critically important. I think the most important thing we're going to do in this report is tell the American people how this happened, so we're prepared for the next time. And it begins, I think, by outlining what their goals were, what they tried to do, in this regard. And we know what they tried to do, because they've done it in other countries around the world for an extensive period of time. The first is, undermine the credibility of the electoral process; to be able to say, that's not a real democracy. It's filled with all kinds of problems. The second is to undermine the credibility of our leaders, including the person who may win. They want that person to go into office hobbled by scandal and all sorts of questions about them. And the third, ideally, in their minds, I imagine, is to be able to control the outcome in some specific instances. If they think they could, either through public messaging, or even in a worst case scenario by actually being able to manipulate the vote--which I know has now been repeatedly testified did not happen here. And, by the way, these are not mutually exclusive. You can do all three, you can only take one. They all work in conjunction. I think you can argue that they have achieved quite a bit, if you think about the amount of time that we have been consumed in this country on this important topic and the political fissures that it's developed. And the way I always kind of point to it--and if anyone disagrees I want you to tell me this--but, you know, we have something in American politics. It's legitimate; both sides do it. It's called opposition research. You find out about your opponent. Hopefully it's embarrassing or disqualifying information if you're the opposition research person. You package it. You leak it to a media outlet. They report it. You run ads on it. Now, imagine being able to do that with the power of a nation state, illegally acquiring things like e-mails and being able to weaponize it by leaking, leaking it to somebody who will post that and create all sorts of noise. I think that's certainly one of the capabilities. The other is just straight-out misinformation, right? The ability to find a site that looks like a real news place, have them run a story that isn't true, have your trolls begin to click on that story. It rises on Facebook as a trending topic. People start to read it. By the time they figure out it isn't true, a lot of people think it is. I remember seeing one in early fall that President Obama had outlawed the Pledge of Allegiance, and I had people texting me about it. And I knew that wasn't true, but my point is that we have people texting about it, asking if it was. It just tells you--and I don't know if that was part of that effort, or it was just somebody with too much time on their hands. And then the third, of course, is the access to our voting systems, and obviously people talk about affecting the tallies. But just think about this. Even the news that a hacker from a foreign government could have potentially gotten into the computer system is enough to create the specter of a losing candidate arguing, the election was rigged, the election was rigged. And because most Americans, including myself, don't fully understand all the technology that's around voting systems per se, you give that `èlection is rigged'' kind of narrative to a troll and a fake news site, and that stuff starts to spread. And before you know it, you have the specter of a political leader in America being sworn in under the cloud of whether or not the election was stolen because vote tallies were actually changed. So I don't know why they were probing these different systems, because obviously a lot of the information they were looking at was publicly available. You can buy it, voter rolls. Campaigns do it all the time. But I would speculate that one of the reasons potentially is because they wanted these stories to be out there, that someone had pinged into these systems, creating a specter of being able to argue at some point that the election was invalid because hackers had touched election systems in key states. And that is why I really, truly believe, Mr. Chairman, it is so important that, to the extent possible, that part of it, the systems part, as much of it be available to the public as possible, because the only way to combat misinformation is with truth and with facts, and explain to people, and I know some of it is proprietary. I know some of it we were trying to protect methods and so forth, but it is really critical that people have confidence that when they go vote that vote is going to count and someone's not going to come in electronically and change it. And I think they're--I just really hope we err on the side of disclosure about our systems so that people have full confidence when they go vote. Because I can tell you, I was on the ballot in November, and I remember people asking me repeatedly, is my vote going to count? I was almost afraid people wouldn't vote because they thought their vote wouldn't count. So I just hope as we move forward--I know that's not your decision to make in terms of declassifications and the like, but it is really, really, really important that Americans understand how our voting systems work, what happened, what didn't and that we be able to communicate that in real-time in the midst of an election, so that if in 2018 these reports start to emerge about our voting systems being pinged again, people aren't--we can put out enough information in October and early November so people don't have doubts. And I know that's not your decisions to make, but I just really hope that's part of what we push on here, because I think it's critical for our future. Chairman Burr. Senator Wyden. Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me say to the three of you, and I say it respectfully, that on the big issue, which is which states were affected by Russian hacking in 2016, the American people don't seem to be getting more information than what they already had before they showed up. We want to be sensitive to security concerns, but that question has to be answered sooner rather than later. I want to send that message in the strongest possible way. We obviously need to know about vulnerabilities so that we can find solutions, and we need better cybersecurity to protect elections from being hacked in the first place. And that means solutions like Oregon's vote-by-mail system, that has a strong paper trail, air-gapped computers, and enough time to fix the problems if they pop up. But now to my question. You all mentioned the January intelligence assessment, saying that the types of systems we observed Russian actors targeting or compromising are not involved in vote tallying. Your prepared testimony today makes another point that I think that is important. You say it is likely that cyber-manipulation of U.S. election systems intended to change the outcome of a national election would be detected. So that is different than what we have heard thus far. So I have two questions for you, Ms. Manfra, and you, Dr. Liles: What level of confidence does the Department have in its assessment that 2016 vote tallying was not targeted or compromised? And second, does that assessment apply to State and local elections? Dr. Liles. Thank you, sir, for the question. So, the level of effort and scale required to change the outcome of a national election would make it nearly impossible to avoid detection. This assessment is based on the diversity of systems, the need for physical access to compromise voting machines themselves, the security of pre-election testing employed by the State and local officials. There's a level, a number of standards and security protocols that are put in place. In addition, the vast majority of localities engage in logic and accuracy testing, which work to ensure voting machines are operating and tabulating as expected. Before, during, and after the election, there has been an immense amount of media attention applied to this, which also brings in the idea of people actually watching and making sure that the election results represent what they see. And plus there's just the statistical anomalies that would be detected, so we have a very high confidence in our assessments. Senator Wyden. What about State and local elections? Do you have the same level of confidence? Dr. Liles. So, from the standpoint of a nation-state actor operating against a State and local election system, we would have the same--for an Internet-connected system, we would have the same level of confidence. Senator Wyden. Ms. Manfra. Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. And I think this also gets to Senator Rubio's point about the difficulty in the general public understanding the variety of systems that are used in our election process. So we broke our level of engagement and concern down to a couple of different areas. The voter registration systems, which are often, usually connected to the Internet. We also were looking at the voting machines themselves, which by best practice and by the voluntary voting standards and guidelines that the Department of Commerce works with the Election Assistance Commission on, is, by best practice--those are not connected to the Internet. Senator Wyden. So can Homeland Security assure the public that the Department would be able to detect an attempted attack on vote tallying? Ms. Manfra. What I would suggest, sir, is that the ability, as has been demonstrated by security researchers, to access remotely a voting machine to manipulate that vote and then to be able to scale that across multiple different voting machines made by different vendors, would be virtually impossible to occur in an undetected way within our current election system. Senator Wyden. Has the Department conducted any kind of post-election forensics on the voting machines that were used in 2016? Ms. Manfra. We are currently engaged with many vendors of those systems to look into conducting some joint forensics with them. The vendor community is very interested in engaging with us. We have not conducted---- Senator Wyden. So there's no--there's been no analysis yet? Ms. Manfra. We have not--our Department has not conducted forensics on specific voting machines. Senator Wyden. Do you believe it's important to do that in terms of being able to reassure Americans that there was no attack on vote tallying? Ms. Manfra. Sir, I would say that we do currently have voluntary standards in place that vendors are enabled--and in approximately 35 states, actually require, some level of certification of those voting machines that they are complying with those standards. We would absolutely be interested in working with vendors to conduct that level of analysis. Senator Wyden. Let me ask one last question. Obviously, the integrity of elections depends on a lot of people: State and local election officers, equipment vendors, third party contractors. Are you all, at Homeland Security and the FBI, confident that the Federal Government has now identified all of the potential government and private sector targets? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. I'm confident that we've identified the potential targets. Senator Wyden. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Burr. Senator Collins. Senator Collins. Mr. Priestap, let me start by saying that it's a great pleasure to see you here again. I remember back in 2003, you were detailed to the Homeland Security Committee when I was the Chairman and how helpful you were in our drafting of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. So thank you for your continued public service. You testified this morning and answered the question of, what does Russia want? And you said that the Russians want to undermine the legitimacy of our elections and sow the seeds of doubt among the American public. Despite the exposure and the publicity given to the Russian's efforts in this regard, do you have any doubt at all that the Russians will continue their activities in subsequent elections? Mr. Priestap. I have no doubt. I just can't--I just don't know the scale and aggressiveness, whether they'll repeat that, if it'll be less or if it'll be more. But I have no doubt they will continue. Senator Collins. Is there any evidence that the Russians have implanted malware or backdoors or other computer techniques to allow them easier access next time to our election systems? Mr. Priestap. I'm sorry, Senator. I just can't comment on that because of our pending investigations. Senator Collins. Secretary Manfra, the secretaries of state who are responsible for the election systems have a pretty blistering attack on the Department of Homeland Security in the testimony that will be given later this morning. And I want to read you part of that and have you respond. They say: ``Yet, nearly six months after the designation''--and they mean the designation of election systems as critical infrastructure-- `ànd in spite of comments by DHS that they are rushing to establish election protections, no secretary of state is currently authorized to receive classified threat information that would help them to protect their election systems.'' Why not? Ms. Manfra. Thank you, ma'am, for that question. I would note that this community, the secretaries of state, and for those states where they have a State election director, is not one that the department has historically engaged with. And what we have done in the process of building the trust and learning about how they do their work and how we can assist, we have identified the need to provide clearances to that community. And so we have committed to them to work through that process between our Department and the FBI. Senator Collins. Let me ask you about your own agency, which is the agency that focuses on critical infrastructure, including our election systems. Now, NPPD is not an official element of the intelligence community that would have routine access to especially sensitive classified information. So how do you know with any certainty whether you and others in the agency are read into all the relevant classified information that may exist regarding foreign threats to our critical infrastructure, including our election systems? Ms. Manfra. Yes, ma'am. I would say, despite the fact that we're not a part of the intelligence community and our focus is on network defense and operations, in partnership with the critical infrastructure and the Federal Government, we feel very confident that with the partnership with our own Intelligence and Analysis Division, that serves as an advocate for us within the intelligence community, as well as our direct relationships with many of those individuals in organizations such as the FBI, NSA, and others, that we receive information quickly; And when we ask to declassify that, they are responsive. And we work through our partners at the Intelligence and Analysis Office to ensure that that happens quickly. So is there room for improvement? Absolutely, of course. But we have the full commitment of the intelligence community to support us and get us the information that we need and our stakeholders need. Senator Collins. And, finally, how many states have implemented all the best practices recommended in the document developed by DHS regarding the protection of election systems? Ms. Manfra. Ma'am, I'd have to get back to you on a specific number of states. I don't have that. Senator Collins. Do you think most states have? Ms. Manfra. In our informal engagement, many of them noted that they had already adopted some of these and to the extent that they weren't they were incorporating them. Senator Collins. I would ask for a response for the record. Ms. Manfra. Yes, ma'am. Senator Collins. That's a really important point. Chairman Burr. Senator Heinrich. Senator Heinrich. Mr. Priestap, I want to thank you for just how seriously you've taken this and how you've answered the questions this morning in your testimony. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said we need to step back and ask the fundamental question, what do the Russians want? And by outlining that they want to undermine legitimacy in our system, that they want to sow discord, that they want to undermine our free and fair elections, we really have a better lens with which to understand the specifics of what happened in 2016. In your view, were the Russians successful at reaching their goals in their activities in our 2016 elections? Mr. Priestap. I don't know for certain whether the Russians would consider themselves successful. In many ways, they might argue that, because of the time and energy we're spending on this topic, maybe it's distracting us from other things. But on the other hand, exactly what this Committee is doing as far as raising awareness of their activities, their aims, for the American people, to me they've done us--in my opinion, they've done the American public a service in that regard. And so, I guess I don't know, but could argue either way. Senator Heinrich. Yes. I think the jury's certainly out for the future, but when you look at the amount of discord that was sown and the impact on 2016, I hope that the outcome of what we're doing here is to make sure that in 2018, and in 2020, and 2022, that by no metric will they have been successful. Mr. Priestap, you stated, very correctly, that one of their primary goals was to delegitimize our democracy. Are are you familiar with the term `ùnwitting agent''? Mr. Priestap. Yes, I am. Senator Heinrich. Can you kind of summarize what that is for us? Mr. Priestap. In an intelligence context, it would be where an intelligence service is trying to advance certain aims and they reach out to a variety of people, some of which they might try to convince to do certain things; and the people, person or persons they contact might actually carry those out, but for different reasons than the intelligence service that actually wanted them to carry them out. In other words, they do it unwittingly. Senator Heinrich. By effectively reinforcing the Russian narrative and publicly saying that our system is rigged, did then-candidate Trump, now President Trump, become what intelligence officials call an unwitting agent? Mr. Priestap. I can't give you a comment on that. Senator Heinrich. I don't blame you for not answering that question. [Laughter.] We've got about a minute 46 left. Can you talk about the relationship between the election penetration that we saw and the coincident Russian use of what Senator Rubio very aptly described of trolls, of bots, of social media, all designed to manipulate the American media cycle, and how those two things fit together? Mr. Priestap. I'm sorry. To clarify, fit together the intrusions with the---- Senator Heinrich. What's the relationship between what they were doing in our elections from a technical point of view and what they were seeking to do in our media cycle by using trolls and bots and manipulation of the media cycles. Mr. Priestap. I guess the best way I can describe it is that this was a, my opinion, a well-planned, well-coordinated, multi-faceted attack on our election process and democracy. And while that might sound complicated, but it was actually really straightforward. They want to collect intelligence from a variety of sources, human and cyber means. They want to evaluate that intelligence, and then they want to selectively-- they might selectively disseminate some of it. They might use others for more strategic discussions. But at the end of the day it's all about collecting intelligence that would give them some type of advantage over the United States and/or attempt to influence things, and then, coordinated, well-coordinated, well-funded, diverse ways to disseminate things to hopefully influence American opinion. Senator Heinrich. This is a very sophisticated, highly resourced effort. Mr. Priestap. Absolutely. Senator Heinrich. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Senator Blunt. Senator Blunt. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Let's talk a little bit about once--let's start with a comment that DHS made in its written comment which says it assesses that the systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying. Now, is that because the vote tallying systems are a whole lot harder to get into than the voter registration systems? Ms. Manfra. I can't make a statement as to why different systems were targeted. What we can assess is that those vote tallying systems, whether it was the machines at a kiosk that a voter uses at the polling station or the systems that are used to tally votes, were very difficult to access, and particularly to access them remotely. And then, given the level of observation for vote tallying at every level of the process, that adds into, you know, that we would have identified issues there, and there were no identified issues. So those two are-- -- Senator Blunt. Okay. I would think that if you could get into the vote tallying system and you did want to impact the outcome of an election, obviously the vote tallying system is the place to do that. And I would also suggest that all of your efforts, a lot of your efforts, should be to continue to do whatever DHS thinks they need to advise--I don't think we should centralize this system--to give advice to State and local election officials to be sure that that vote tallying system is protected at a level above other systems. You know, the voter registration system is public information. It is generally accessible in lots of ways. It's not nearly as protected, for that reason. You have lots of input from lots of sources into that system. And I think, Ms. Manfra, you made the point that you said that the best practice would be to not have the vote tallying system connected in any unnecessary way to the Internet. Is that right? Ms. Manfra. Both the kiosks themselves and vote tallying systems, to not connect them to the Internet and to also have, ideally, paper auditing trails as well. Senator Blunt. Well, I certainly agree with that. The paper trail is significant and I think more prevalent as people are looking at new systems. But also, I think any kind of third party monitoring--the first two parties would be the voter and the counting system--just creates another way into the system. So my advice would be that DHS doesn't want to be in a situation where somehow you're connected to all the voting systems of the country. And Mr. Liles, I think you said the diversity of our voting system is a great strength of the system. Do you want to comment on that any more? Dr. Liles. Yes, sir. When we were setting it as part of our red teaming activities, we looked at the diversity of the voting system as actually a great strength and the fact that there were not connected in any one kind of centralized way. So we evaluated that as--when we were looking at the risk assessment with OCIA, the Office of Cyber Intelligence Analysis--Infrastructure Analysis, we looked at that as one of the great strengths and our experts at the IC we worked with also said the same thing. Senator Blunt. Well, I would hope you'd continue to think about that as one of the great strengths as you look at this critical infrastructure, because every avenue for Federal monitoring is also just one more avenue for somebody else to figure out how to get into that system. And again, the voter registration system, dramatically different in what it does. All public information accessible, printed out, given to people to use, though you are careful of what information you give and what you don't. But almost all election officials that have this system now have some way to share that with the public as a system. There is no reason to share the security of the vote counting system with the public or to have it available or accessible. And I would hope that the DHS, or nobody else, decides that you're going to save this system by having more avenues, more avenues into the system. Ms. Manfra. Absolutely not, sir. We're fully supportive of the voluntary standards process, and we are engaging with that process with our experts, and we continue, again, with the voluntary partnership with the State and local. And we intend to continue that. Senator Blunt. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Burr. Senator King. Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Starting with a couple of short questions, Mr. Priestap. Number one, you've stated this was a very grave threat, that Russia--the attempts to probe and upset our local election systems. Any doubt it was the Russians? Mr. Priestap. No, sir. Senator King. Any doubt that they'll be back? Mr. Priestap. No, sir. Senator King. To our DHS witnesses, have the 21 states that you've mentioned, that we know where we had this happen, been notified officially? Ms. Manfra. Sir, the owners of the systems within those 21 states have been notified. Senator King. How about the election officials in those states? Ms. Manfra. We are working to ensure that election officials as well understand. I'll have to get back to you on whether all 21 states---- Senator King. Have you had a conference of all State election officials, secretaries of state, here in Washington on this issue? Ms. Manfra. I have had at least two teleconferences; and in-person conferences, we will be engaging with them in July, I believe. Senator King. Well, I would urge you to put some urgency on this. We've got another election coming in 18 months, and if we're talking about systems and registration rolls, the time is going by. So I believe this is, as we've already heard characterized, is a very grave threat. It's going to be back and shame on us if we're not prepared. Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. We have biweekly--every other week, we hold a teleconference with all relevant election officials. The national associations that represent those individuals have nominated bipartisan individuals to engage with us on a regular basis. This is of the utmost urgency for the Department and this government to ensure that we have better protections going forward, and the community, the election community, is similarly committed and has been so for years. Senator King. And just to be clear, nobody's talking about a Federal takeover of local election systems or Federal rules. What we're talking about is technical assistance and information and perhaps some funding at some point? Ms. Manfra. Sir, this is similar to our engagement with all critical infrastructure sectors, whether it's the electrical sector, the nuclear sector, the financial sector, is completely voluntary and it is about this Department providing information both to potential victims, but to all network defenders, to ensure that they have access to what we have access to and can better defend themselves. Senator King. Thank you. Mr. Liles, I'll take issue with something that you said, that we have a national election and it was just too large, too diverse, to really crack. We don't have a national election. What we have are 50 State elections. And each election in the states can depend upon a certain number of counties. There are probably 500 people within the sound of my voice who could tell you which ten counties in the United States will determine the next Presidential election. And so you really--a sophisticated actor could hack a Presidential election simply by focusing on particular counties. Senator Rubio I'm sure remembers Dade County in the year 2000 and the significance that had to determining who the next President of the United States was. So I don't think it works to just say, oh, it's a big system and the diversity will protect us, because it really is county by county, city by city, State by State, and a sophisticated actor, which the Russians are, could easily determine where to direct their attack. So I don't want to rely on the diversity. Second, a separate point is, what do we recommend? And we've talked about paper backups. The Dutch just had an election where they just decided to make it all paper and count the ballots by hand, for this very reason. So what would you tell my elections clerk in Brunswick, Maine, Ms. Manfra, would be the top three things he or she should think about in protecting themselves in this situation? Ms. Manfra. Sir, I would say to, first, as previous Senators mentioned, prioritize the security of your voting machines and the vote tallying system, ensure that they are not connected to the Internet, even if that is enabled on those particular devices. Second, ensure that you have an auditing process in place where you can identify anomalies throughout the process, educate polling workers to look for suspicious activity, for example. Senator King. But doesn't auditing mean a paper trail, a paper backup? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. I would recommend a paper backup. Senator King. And one of the worrisome things, again, on the issue of the national, we talk about how diverse it is, but aren't we seeing a consolidation in terms of the vendors who are producing these machines? Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. It is my understanding that we are seeing some consolidation in the vendor community. Again, many of them are committed and have engaged on the voluntary voting standards and guidelines, which partly include security. We will be updating those security guidelines in 2018. And yes, while there is some concern about consolidation, we do look forward to engaging with them, and as of now they are a very engaged community. Senator King. I think this aspect of this question that this Committee is looking at is one of the most important, and frankly one of the most daunting, because we pretty well determined that they weren't successful in changing tallies and changing votes, but they weren't doing what they did in at least 21 states for fun. And they are going to be back, and they're going to be back with knowledge and information that they didn't have before. So I commend you for your attention to this and certainly hope that this is treated with the absolute utmost urgency. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Burr. Senator Lankford. Senator Lankford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of you for being here as well today. To Senator King just as a heads up, there are some states that are like that. For 25 years the Oklahoma election system has had a paper ballot and an optical scan and it's been a very good back-up for us. We quickly count because of the optical scan, but we're able to go back and verify because of paper. This is such a big deal and it's such an ongoing conversation that I'm actually in two simultaneous hearings today I'm running back and forth with. In the Department of Homeland Security and what we're dealing with State elections and with State systems, is also happening in the HSGAC hearing that I'm also at, including my own Oklahoma CIO that's there testifying today on this same issue, how we are protecting State systems, State elections and what's happening. I brought this with me today. You all are probably--this group is very, very familiar with this e-mail. This is the famous e-mail that Billy Rinehart got from the DNC while he happened to be on vacation. He was out in Hawaii enjoying some quality time away from his work at the DNC, and he gets an e- mail from Google, it appears, that says someone has used your password, someone just tried to sign in to your Google account; sent it to him and told him someone tried to do it from the Ukraine; and recommended that he go in and change his password immediately. [The material referred to follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Senator Lankford. Which, as the New York Times reported, he groggily at 4:00 a.m., when he saw that e-mail was frustrated by it, went in, clicked on the link, changed his password and went back to bed. But what he actually did was just gave the Russian government access to the DNC, and then it took off from there. Multiple other staff members of the DNC got an e-mail that looked just like this. Now, everyone who has a Google account, will know that really looks like a Google account warning. It looked like the real thing. When you hovered over the ``change password,'' it showed a Google account connection where it was going to, but it wasn't. It was going to the Russians. About 91 percent, my understanding is, about 91 percent of the hacks that come into different systems, start with a spear phish attack that looks just like this. So let's talk about, in practical terms, for our State election folks and what happens in my State and other states. First for you, Mr. Priestap. How does Russia identify a potential target? Because this is not just a random e-mail that came to him. This was targeted directly at him, to his address. It looked very real, because they knew who he was and where he works. So, how were the Russians that savvy to be able to track this person and how does this work in the future for an election system for a State? Mr. Priestap. So I can't go into great detail in this forum, but I'd say what intelligent services do, not just Russia there, is they're looking for vulnerabilities. That would begin in the cyber sense with computer vulnerabilities. As far as targeting specific individuals, I don't know all the facts surrounding that e-mail and all the e-mails that were sent, but my guess is they didn't just send it to one person. They sent it the email like that to a whole variety, just hoping that one would click on it. Senator Lankford. Right. But how are they getting that information? Are they going to their website, for instance, and gathering all the e-mails for it? I'm trying to figure out, are they tracking individuals to get more information, so they get something that looks like something they would click on? Mr. Priestap. Yes. You hit on it, but a whole variety of ways. They might get it through reviewing open source material, either online or otherwise. But they also collect a lot of information through human means as well. Senator Lankford. So, Ms. Manfra, let me ask you this question. When someone at any location clicks on a link like this, what access to information do they get typically? Ms. Manfra. Well, sir, it depends on the system itself. I imagine that's probably a frustrating response. But given the-- and I think this is important for the public to understand. As the threat evolves, they're going to continue as we educate the public, don't click on certain things. Look at, you know, make sure you know the sender, for instance, before you click on it, and as our defense gets better the offense is going to look for other means. And so we look, you know, in this case, ideally, we want people to look and see what is it that they're actually clicking on before they click it. Some organizations choose to say when an individual clicks on that link, they choose to not allow that to go to that designation, because they know it's suspicious or they have some mechanisms in place to put that into a container and look at it. Other organizations don't take those steps, and it really depends on your risk management and the technical control that you put in place. Senator Lankford. Let me ask you a quick question. Who has primary responsibility for Federal election integrity? Which agency is the prime mover in that? Obviously, states oversee their own, but which Federal entity is working with the State to say they're the prime person or the prime agency to do it? Ms. Manfra. For election cybersecurity, our Department, in coordination with the FBI and others, is leading the partnership with State and locals. Senator Lankford. Great. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Senator Manchin. Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank all of you for your appearance here today and your testimony. Being a former secretary of state of my great State of West Virginia, and also being a former governor, my utmost concern was voter fraud. Every time that we would have a report of a fraud, I would see the election participation decrease the next election cycle, thinking their vote didn't count. Is there any reason at all that any person that has the knowledge that you all have, or anyone that you've--on our Committee here, from the intelligence community, would give you any doubt that Russia was involved, and Russia was very much involved with the intent of doing harm to our election process, as far as the confidence level that voters would have? Do any of you have any concerns whatsoever, any doubts, that the Russians were behind this and involved in a higher level than ever? All three of you. Mr. Priestap. No, no doubt from the FBI's end as far as Russia's involvement. Senator Manchin. And you've all interacted with all the intelligence community, right? Mr. Priestap. Yes, sir. Ms. Manfra. Similar, sir. I have no doubt. Mr. Liles. No, sir. Senator Manchin. So nobody. There's not an American right now that should have a reasonable doubt whatsoever that the Russians were involved. Were all 50 states notified on Russia's intentions and activities during the 2016 election cycle? Had you all put an alert out? So if I'd have been secretary of state in charge of my elections in West Virginia, would you have notified me to be on the lookout? Ms. Manfra. Sir, I can discuss our products that we put out and I'll defer to the FBI on what they put out. We did put out products, not public products, but we did put out products, primarily leveraging our Multi-State Information Sharing Analysis Center, which has connections to all 50 states CIOs. And we engaged with the Election Assistance Commission and other national associations that represent those individuals to ensure that we were able to reach--again, this was a community that we had not historically engaged with, and so we relied on those, and we did put out multiple products prior to the election. Senator Manchin. And you're really not sure if these national associations, the secretaries of states, dispersed that information, put everybody on high alert? Ms. Manfra. I believe that they did, sir. We also held a conference call where all 50 secretaries of state or an election director if the secretary of state didn't have that responsibility, in August, in September, and again in October, both high-level engagement and network defense products. Senator Manchin. And if I could ask this questions to whoever, maybe Mr. Priestap. What was Russia's intention, and do you think they were successful in what they desired to do, even though they didn't alter--as you all have said, you can see no alterations of the election results. Do you believe that it had an effect in this election outcome of this 2016 election? Mr. Priestap. As far as Russia's intention, again, the broader being to undermine democracy and one of the ways they sought to do this, of course, here was to undermine the legitimacy of our free and fair election. Senator Manchin. Do you believe they were successful in the outcome? Mr. Priestap. No, I--the FBI doesn't look at that as far as did Russia achieve its aims in that regard. Senator Manchin. Let me ask this question. Are there counter-actions the U.S. can take to subvert or punish the Russians for what they have done and their intention to continue? And what's your opinion of the sanctions that we have placed on Russia? Mr. Priestap. As you know, the FBI doesn't do policy. I'm here today to provide you an overview of the threat picture, at least as I understand and see it. But obviously the U.S. government did take action post-election in regards to making a number of Russian officials---- Senator Manchin. Have you seen them subside at all any of their activities since we have taken some actions? Mr. Priestap. Subside? They have less people to carry out their activities, so it's certainly had an impact on the number of people. Senator Manchin. And finally, with the few seconds I have left, have we shared this with our allies, our European allies, who are going through election processes, and have they seen the same intervention in their election process that we have seen from the Russians in ours? Mr. Priestap. Sure. I can't speak for DHS, but the FBI is sharing this information with our allies, absolutely. Senator Manchin. How about DHS? Ms. Manfra. We are also sharing information with our allies. Senator Manchin. Are they seeing a high--an overaggressive, high activity, from the Russians that they haven't seen at this level before, such as we did during the 2016 election? Dr. Liles. Sir, there is media reporting that suggests that. We don't have direct government-to-government relationships from a DHS perspective. There is definitely media reporting that they're seeing an increased activity. Senator Manchin. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Senator Cotton. Senator Cotton. Thank you all for your appearance today. Mr. Priestap, in response to Mr. Heinrich's question about whether Donald Trump had become an unwitting agent of Russia and their efforts to sow discord and discontent about our elections, you said that you declined to answer, which is understandable. Let's look at this from a different perspective. Since her election defeat, Hillary Clinton has blamed her loss on the Russians, Vladimir Putin, the FBI, Jim Comey, fake news, WikiLeaks, Twitter, Facebook, and, my personal favorite, content farms in Macedonia. In her blaming her loss on these actors, has Hillary Clinton become an unwitting agent of Russians' goals in the United States? Mr. Priestap. And I'm sorry, sir, but I'd rather not comment. It's just something---- Senator Cotton. I understand. I just wanted to point out that you can look at it from two different---- Mr. Priestap [continuing]. It's just something I haven't given any thoughts to. Senator Cotton. Let's turn to other matters, then. Would you advise states and localities in the conduct of their elections or, more broadly, in their government services not to use or not to do business with Kaspersky Labs, companies that do business with Kaspersky, or companies that use Kaspersky products in their systems? Mr. Priestap. Sir, I can't really comment on that in this setting. Senator Cotton. Miss Manfra, would you advise them not to use Kaspersky products? Ms. Manfra. I can also not comment on that in this forum, sir. Senator Cotton. I don't even have to ask, Dr. Liles. You're reaching for your microphone. Dr. Liles. Yes, sir. I can't comment either. Senator Cotton. Okay. Senator Risch says he'll answer, but I'll let him speak for himself at a later time. Mr. Priestap, we've talked a lot about Russia's intent and activities in our elections, but I think it's important that the American people realize that it goes much farther than just elections and the 2016 campaign, as well. Isn't it true that Russian cyber actors have been probing U.S. critical infrastructure for years? Mr. Priestap. Yes, sir. I can't go into specifics, but they probe a lot of things of critical importance to this country. Senator Cotton. And as the head of counterintelligence, you write in your statement, that quote, ``Russia's 2016 Presidential election influence effort was its boldest to date in the United States,'' which implies there have been previous efforts. You also say that the FBI had to strengthen the intelligence community assessment because of our history investigating Russia's intelligence operations within the United States. Both of which suggest that this keeps you pretty busy in your portfolio at counterintelligence, is that right? Mr. Priestap. That's correct. Senator Cotton. And this Russian intelligence threat is not just a cyber threat, either. It also is a threat from traditional human intelligence, or what a layman might call spies, is that right? Mr. Priestap. Yes, sir. Senator Cotton. Do so-called diplomats who work down out of the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., have the requirement to notify our State Department in advance if they plan to travel more than 25 miles, and give that notification 48 hours in advance? Mr. Priestap. They do. Senator Cotton. And the State Department's supposed to notify the FBI in advance of those travel arrangements, correct? Mr. Priestap. Yes. Senator Cotton. Is it true that the Russian nationals often fail to give that notification at all, or they give it at, say, 4:55 on a Friday afternoon before a weekend trip? Mr. Priestap. I'd prefer not to go into those details here, but--I'll leave it at that. Senator Cotton. Does it complicate you and your agents' efforts to conduct your counterintelligence mission to have Russian nationals wandering around the country more than 25 miles outside their duty assignment? Mr. Priestap. Sure. If that were to happen, that would absolutely complicate our efforts. Senator Cotton. The Secretary of Defense recently indicated at an Armed Services Committee hearing that Russia is in violation of something called the Open Skies Treaty, a treaty we have with Russia and other nations that allow us to overfly their territory and take pictures and they do the same here. Do we see so-called Russian diplomats traveling to places that are in conjunction with Open Skies flights that Russia's conducting in this country? Mr. Priestap. I'm sorry, I just can't comment on that here. Senator Cotton. Okay. Last summer, an American diplomat in Moscow was brutally assaulted on the doorstep of our embassy in Moscow. Did we take any steps to retaliate against Russia for that assault in Moscow? Did we declare persona non grata any of their so-called diplomats here in the United States? Mr. Priestap. If I recall correctly, we didn't immediately do anything in that regard. Senator Cotton. Okay. This Committee passed unanimously in Committee last year something that just passed as part of the omnibus spending bill in April a provision that would require, one, the State Department to notify the FBI of any requests for Russian diplomats to travel more than 25 miles outside their embassy and to report violations to you. It further requires the State Department to report those violations regularly to this Committee. What's the status of that provision now that it's been in law for about two months? Is the State Department cooperating more fully with you? Mr. Priestap. I guess I'd rather not comment on that here. We're still working through the implementation of that. Senator Cotton. Well, I certainly hope they start. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Senator Harris. Senator Harris. Thank you. Ms. Manfra, you mentioned that you notified the owners. I'm not clear on who the owners are. Are they the vendors? Ms. Manfra. What I meant to clarify is in some case it may not be the secretary of state or the state election director who owns that particular system. So in some cases it could be a locality or a vendor. Senator Harris. So is there a policy of who should be notified when you suspect that there's a threat? Ms. Manfra. We are working through that policy with the secretaries of state. That is one of the commitments that we made to them, and election directors, in order to ensure that they have appropriate information, while preserving the confidentiality of the victim publicly. Senator Harris. And can you tell us which states--in which states you notified the vendor instead of notifying the secretary of state? Ms. Manfra. We keep the vendor information confidential as well. Senator Harris. Are there states that you notified where you did not notify the person who was elected by the people of that State to oversee elections? Ms. Manfra. I don't believe that's the case, but I will get back to you with a definitive answer. Senator Harris. And how specific was the warning that you sent? What exactly is it that you notified the states or the vendors of? Ms. Manfra. Depending on the scenario and the information that we had--and more generally, what we do is when we get classified information we look to declassify as much as possible to enable---- Senator Harris. Let's talk about the election, yes. Ms. Manfra. So for this particular one, what we took was technical information that we had, that we believed was suspicious, and that was emanating from Russia, and was targeting their system. We asked them to look at their system. We asked--and this was part of the broader dissemination as well--we asked all states to look at their system, to identify whether they had an intrusion or whether they blocked it. In most cases, they blocked it. Senator Harris. Do you have a copy with you of the notification you sent to these various vendors or states? Ms. Manfra. I do not, ma'am, but we can get back to you. Senator Harris. Okay, and will you provide this Committee with a copy of the notification you sent to those states or vendors? Ms. Manfra. Many of them were done in person, but what I can show you is the technical information. That was also rolled up in the information that we published in December, but I can show you what we provided to the states and localities. Senator Harris. And did you notify each of them the same way? Or did you tailor the notification to each State? Ms. Manfra. We tailor the notification. It's a process for all victim or potential victim notifications, us and the FBI. So sometimes it may be an FBI field agent that goes out there, sometimes it may be a Department official that goes out there. Senator Harris. Okay. So in your follow-up to the Committee, please provide us with specifically who notified each State, and then who in that State was notified, the vendor or the State election official, and also what specifically they were notified of. In 2007, California worked with leading security researchers--the secretary of state at the time was Deborah Bowen--and they instituted some of the best practices, we believe, for election security. And my understanding is that it is considered a gold standard. So my question is, does DHS have the technical capability and authority to coordinate a study like that for all of the states? Ms. Manfra. We do have the technical capability and authority to conduct those sorts of studies, ma'am, yes. Senator Harris. Have you pursued that as a viable option to help the states do everything they can to secure their systems? Ms. Manfra. That is one of the areas that we're considering, yes, ma'am. Senator Harris. So have you taken a look at that study that was commissioned in California in 2007? And if not, I'd encourage that you do. Ms. Manfra. I have not personally, but I will read it, ma'am. Senator Harris. And I'm also concerned that the Federal Government does not have all the information it needs in these situations where there's been a breach. Is there any requirement that a State notify the Federal Government when they suspect there's been a breach? Ms. Manfra. No, ma'am. Senator Harris. And in terms of the American public and voters in each of these states, can you tell me is there any requirement that the State notify its residents when the State suspects there may be a breach? Ms. Manfra. I cannot comment. I know that multiple states have different sunshine laws, etcetera, that apply to data breaches within the State, so I couldn't make a general statement about what their requirements are at the State level. Senator Harris. And do any of you have any thoughts about whether there should be such requirements, both in terms of states reporting to the Federal Government and also states reporting to their own residents and citizens about any breaches of their election system? Ms. Manfra. Required data breach reporting is a complicated area. We prefer, and we've had a fair amount of success with, voluntary reporting and partnerships, but we'd be happy to work with your staff in further understanding how that might apply here. Senator Harris. Okay, I appreciate that. Any other thoughts as we think about how we can improve notification and sharing of information? [No response.] No. Okay, thank you. Chairman Burr. Before I move to Senator Reed, let me just say that, since a number of members have questioned the agencies, especially those that are here, and the sharing with Congress of the investigation, I'll just say that the Chair and the Vice Chair were briefed at the earliest possible time and continued to be briefed throughout the process, and then it was opened up to all the members of the Committee. I'm not sure that I had ever shared that with everybody, but I just want to make sure that everybody's aware of that. Senator Reed. Senator Reed. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Let's start with Mr. Priestap. Are you aware of any direction or guidance from President Trump to conduct this investigation about the Russian interest in our elections? Mr. Priestap. Sir, I can't comment on that. It could be potentially related to things under the Special Counsel's purview. Senator Reed. Thank you. Ms. Manfra, in terms of the Department of Homeland Security, are you aware of any direction by the President to conduct these types of operations or your investigations? Ms. Manfra. Sir, to clarify the question, direction from the President to---- Senator Reed. That the President of the United States has directed that the Department of Homeland Security and other Federal agencies conduct the activities that you're conducting, essentially an investigation into the Russian hacking in the election. Ms. Manfra. I can't comment on the President's directions specifically, but our Secretary is committed to understanding what happened, ensuring that we are better protected in the future, so our activities are fully supported. Senator Reed. He has not communicated that this is at the direction of the President of the United States? Ms. Manfra. No, sir. Senator Reed. Dr. Liles. Dr. Liles. Sir, this comes directly--the IC has been working on this for quite a while, and the Secretary has completely supported it. Senator Reed. But again, no---- Dr. Liles. Nothing from the President directly, sir. Senator Reed. Thank you. I thought Senator King raised some very interesting issues in terms of most elections, national elections, as much you like to think about it, particularly from Rhode Island, are not decided in certain states, but decided even in certain cities and counties, which raised an interesting question. You were very assertive about that you'd be able to diagnose an intrusion that was altering voter--votes, literally. When could you do that? Within weeks of an election, on Election Day, after Election Day? Dr. Liles. Sir, from an IC perspective, the way we would do that is by looking at the threats themselves that were targeting the specific entities. And the other element that we would look at is, as the reporting itself was coming in, if there was any statistical anomalies in what we were seeing. And I'd also point out that we're talking about Internet- connected systems here, and not all of the key counties that you would represent would be those Internet-connected systems. Senator Reed. But, effectively, I think what you've said is that you'd really have to wait for confirmation until the results started coming in on Election Day, which raises the issue of, even if you detect it on Election Day, what do we do? The votes have already been cast. Are you--is anyone planning on--what's the--what reaction we take? How do we notify people? What are--what steps do we take? Dr. Liles. I'd have to defer that to others. Ms. Manfra. Yes, sir. And I do want to clarify, when we say that that activity would be difficult to detect, it would be-- or difficult to go on undetected, it would--that we're discussing both at the polling station or the jurisdiction, that it would be hard for somebody to do that without anybody, not necessarily that the Department would have that immediate insight. And to answer your question, yes, that is absolutely something that is a part of our planning and what we would look forward to partnering with the State and local officials on understanding. Senator Reed. So we're, again, about 18 months away from election. We have to be able to develop, not technical infrastructure, but an organizational infrastructure that could react, maybe on very short notice, to discovery that actual votes were being tampered. Is that accurate? Ms. Manfra. Absolutely, sir. It is both technical and organizational. Senator Reed. And do you think there's enough emphasis in terms of the resources and support to do that, the collaboration? You got 50 states and among those states many of the voting jurisdictions are not at the State level; they're the city and town. Are we taking it serious enough? I guess that's the issue. Ms. Manfra. Absolutely, sir. This is one of our highest priorities. And I would also note that we're not just looking ahead to 2018, as election officials remind me routinely that elections are conducted on a regular basis. And so--highest priority, sir. Yes. Senator Reed. Let me ask, Mr. Priestap. If I've pronounced it incorrectly, forgive me. But you testified today, and your colleagues, that information was exfiltrated by the Russians. What type of information was taken and what could it be used for? Mr. Priestap. Yes. I don't want to get into the details of what victim information was taken. Again, we've got a variety of pending investigations. But again, it could be used for a variety of purposes. It could have been taken to understand what's in those systems. It could have been taken to use to try to target--learn more about individuals, so that they could be targeted. It could have been taken in a way to then publicize, just to send a message that a foreign adversary has the ability to take things and to sow doubt in our voters' minds. Senator Reed. Let me ask you this question, as a judgment. Given the activities that the Russians have deployed, significant resources, constant effort over--as you, the intelligence community--probably a decade, do you think they have a better grasp of the vulnerabilities of the American voting system than you have? Mr. Priestap. I hope not. I think it's an excellent question and I can--well, first of all, I hope not and I don't think so. But if they did, I don't think they do any more. Senator Reed. Thank you very much. Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator Reed. Before we move to the second panel, one last question, Mr. Priestap, for you. Is there any evidence that the attempt to penetrate the DNC was for the purposes of launching this election year intrusion process that they went on? Or was this at the time one of multiple fishing expeditions that existed by Russian actors in the United States? Mr. Priestap. In my opinion, it was one of many efforts. You'd call it a fishing expedition, but to determine, again, what's out there, what intelligence can they collect. So they don't go after one place. They go after lots of places and then---- Chairman Burr. Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Mr. Priestap. Hundreds, at least hundreds. Chairman Burr. Okay. I want to wrap up the first panel with just a slight recap. I think you have thoroughly covered that there's no question that Russia carried out attacks on State election systems. No vote tallies were affected or affected the outcome of the elections. Russia continues to engage in exploitation of the U.S. elections process and elections are now considered a critical infrastructure, which is extremely important and does bring some interesting potential new guidelines that might apply to other areas of critical infrastructure that we have not thought of because of the autonomy of each individual State and the control within their State of their election systems. So I'm sure this will be further discussed as the appropriate committees talk about Federal jurisdiction, where that extends to. And clearly, I think it's this Committee's responsibility as we wrap up our investigation to hand off to that Committee somewhat of a road map from what we've learned are areas that we need to address, and we will work very closely with DHS and with the Bureau as we do that. With that, I will dismiss the first panel and call up the second panel. [Pause.] Chairman Burr. I'd like to call the second panel to order, and ask those visitors to please take their seats. As we move into our second panel this morning, our hearing is shifting from a Federal Government focus to a State-level focus. During this second panel, we'll gain insight into the experiences of the states in 2016, as well as hear about efforts to maintain election security moving forward. For our second panel, I'd like to welcome our witnesses: the Honorable Connie Lawson, President-elect of the National Association of Secretaries of State and the Secretary of State of Indiana; Michael Haas, the Midwest Regional Representative to the National Association of State Election Directors and the Administrator of the Wisconsin Election Commission; Steve Sandvoss, Executive Director of the Illinois State Board of Elections; and Dr. J. Alex Halderman, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Michigan. Thank you all for being here. Collectively, you bring a wealth of knowledge and a depth of understanding of our State election systems, potential vulnerabilities of our voting process and procedures, and the mitigation measures we need to take at the State level to protect the foundation of American democracy. In January of this year, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson designated the election infrastructure used in Federal elections as a component of U.S. critical infrastructure. DHS stated that the designation established election infrastructure as a priority within the national infrastructure protection plan. It enabled the Department to prioritize our cybersecurity assistance to State and local election officials for those who requested it, and made it publicly known that the election infrastructure enjoys all the benefits and protections of critical infrastructure that the U.S. government has to offer. Some of your colleagues objected to this designation, seeing it as Federal Government interference. Today I'd like to hear your views on this specifically, but more broadly how the states and the Federal Government can best work together. I'm a proud defender of states' rights but this could easily be a moment of ``divided we fall.'' We must set aside our suspicions and see this for what it is, an opportunity to unite against a common threat. Together, we can bring considerable resources to bear and keep the election system safe. Again, I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here, and at this time I'd turn to the Vice Chairman for any comments he might make. The Vice Chairman doesn't have any. I will assume, Mr. Haas, that by some process you have been elected to go first, unless there is an agreement--which--where are we going to start? Mr. Haas. Actually, I think we were going to defer to Secretary Lawson to start, if that's okay with the Chair. Chairman Burr. Madam Secretary, you are recognized. STATEMENT OF CONNIE LAWSON, PRESIDENT-ELECT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECRETARIES OF STATE, AND SECRETARY OF STATE, STATE OF INDIANA Ms. Lawson. Well, good morning, Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Warner and distinguished members of the Committee. I want to thank you for the chance to appear before you today. It's an honor to represent the Nation's secretaries of state, 40 of whom serve as chief State election officials. I am Connie Lawson, Indiana Secretary of State, and I'm also President-Elect of the bipartisan National Association of Secretaries of State. I'm here to discuss our capacity to secure State and locally-run elections from very significant and persistent nation state cyber threats. With statewide elections in New Jersey and Virginia this year and many more contests to follow in 2018, I want to assure you and all Americans that election officials across the United States are taking cybersecurity very seriously. First and foremost, this hearing offers a chance to separate facts from fiction regarding the 2016 presidential election. As noted many times, we have seen no evidence that vote casting or counting was subject to manipulation in any State or locality, nor do we have any reason to question the results. Just a quick summary of what we know about documented foreign targeting of State and local election systems. In the 2016 election cycle, as confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security, no major cybersecurity issues were reported on Election Day, November 8. Last summer, our intelligence agencies found that up to 20 State networks had been probed by entities essentially rattling the door knobs to check for unlocked doors. Foreign-based hackers were able to gain access to voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois, prompting the FBI to warn State election offices to increase their election security measures for the November election. In more recent days, we've learned from a TOP SECRET NSA report that the identity of a company providing voter registration support services in several states was compromised. Of course, it's gravely concerning that election officials have only recently learned about the threats outlined in the leaked NSA report, especially given the fact that the former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson repeatedly told my colleagues and I that no specific or credible threats existed in the fall of 2016. It is unclear why our intelligence agencies would withhold timely and specific threat information from election officials. I have every confidence that other panelists will address voting equipment risk and conceptual attack scenarios for you today. But I want to emphasize some systemic safeguards that we have against cyber attackers. Our system is complex and decentralized, with a great deal of agility and low levels of connectivity. Even within states, much diversity can exist from one locality to the next. This autonomy serves as a check on the capabilities of nefarious actors. I also want to mention the recent designation of election systems as critical infrastructure. Real issues exist with the designation, including a lack of clear parameters around the order, which currently provides DHS and other Federal agencies with a large amount of unchecked executive authority over our election's process. At no time between August of 2016 and January of 2017 did NASS and its members ever have a thorough discussion with DHS on what the designation means. Threat-sharing had been touted as a key justification for the designation. Yet, nearly six months later, no secretary of state is currently authorized to receive classified threat information from our intelligence agencies. From information gaps to knowledge gaps that aren't being addressed, this process threatens to erode public confidence in the election process as much as any foreign cyber threat. It's also shredding the rights that states hold to determine their own election procedures subject to the acts of Congress. If the designation ultimately reduces diversity and autonomy in our voting process, the potential for adverse effects from perceived or real cyber effects--attacks excuse me--will likely be much greater and not the other way around. Looking ahead, the National Association--the NASS Election Security Task Force was created to ensure that State election officials are working together to combat threats and foster effective partnerships with the Federal Government and other public-private stakeholders. In guarding against cyber threats, the trend line is positive, but more can be done. Most notably, many states and localities are working to replace or upgrade their voting equipment. If I have one major request for you today, other than rescinding the critical infrastructure designation for elections, it is to help election officials get access to classified information-sharing. We need this information to defend State elections from foreign interference and respond to threats. Thank you, and I look forward to answering your questions. [The prepared statement of Ms. Lawson follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Burr. Thank you, Secretary Lawson. Who would like to--Mr. Haas. STATEMENT OF MICHAEL HAAS, MIDWEST REGIONAL REPRESENTATIVE, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF STATE ELECTION DIRECTORS Mr. Haas. Thank you. Good morning. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner and Committee members: On behalf of the National Association of State Election Directors, thank you for this opportunity to share what states learned from the 2016 elections and some steps that we are taking to further secure our election systems. I serve as Wisconsin's chief election official, and I'm a member of NASED's executive board. We do not have a State elected official who oversees elections in Wisconsin. Many of our State election directors across the country are housed in the secretary of state's offices, but some are not. The 2016 presidential election reinforced several basic lessons, although sometimes in a new context. For instance, all of us understand the importance of constant and effective communication to ensure that all actors have the tools they need. The new twist in 2016, of course, involved communicating about the security of election systems with the Department of Homeland Security as well as the State staff who provide cyber security protection to our voter registration databases. As we have heard this morning, some states have expressed concerns about the timeliness and the details of communications from Homeland Security regarding potential threats, security threats to State election systems. The recent reports about attempted attacks on State voter registration systems, which occurred last fall, caught many states by surprise. We look forward to working with DHS and other Federal officials to develop protocols and expectations for communicating similar information going forward. For example, State election officials believe it is important that we be in the loop regarding contacts that DHS has with local election officials regarding security threats such as the spear phishing attempts that were recently publicized. States should be aware of this information to protect their systems and so that we can provide additional training and guidance to local election officials. I appreciate the concern that was expressed this morning that this is a two-way street. And we at the State level need to also think carefully about how to most effectively communicate with our local election officials if and when there is an incident that we are aware of at the State level. As part of the DHS designation of election systems as critical infrastructure, bodies such as coordinating councils can help to facilitate decisions regarding the proper balance between notifying State and local officials and protecting confidential or sensitive information. NASED believes that those coordinating bodies should consist of a broad representation of stakeholders, and we have expressed our strong interest to DHS in participating on those bodies. I would also note that the executive board of NASED supports the request of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission that it serves as the co-sector specific--specific agency as the logical Federal agency to partner with DHS to provide subject matter expertise and assistance in communicating with local election officials, as the EAC has that communications structure already in place. The 2016 elections also reinforced the need for constantly enhancing the security of voter registration databases, as we have heard this morning. While hacking into a voter registration system has no effect on tabulating election results, intrusions could result in unauthorized parties gaining access to data regarding voters, candidates, ballot contests, and polling places. I would note that, while much of that information is public upon request, there may be some confidential data held in those databases, such as the voter's date of birth, the driver license number, the last four digits of the social security number. Different states have different laws about what pieces of that data are confidential. The 2016 elections demonstrated that State and local election officials can implement steps to improve the security of voter data, and that many of these steps are not complicated. In addition to the cyber hygiene scans and risk assessments, states are implementing greater use of multi- factor authentication for users of our systems, updating firewalls, the use of white lists to block unauthorized users, and completely blocking access from any foreign IP address. The final lesson of 2016 I would like to address relates to voting equipment. To be clear, as it has been said many times this morning, there is no evidence that voting machines or election results have been altered in U.S. elections. I appreciate the Committee's emphasis on that. I think that for the public that cannot be stated enough and strongly enough. Still, we as election administrators must exercise vigilance to assure that such theoretical attacks do not become reality, and we must also continue to educate the public about safeguards in the system. Those safeguards include the decentralized structure of elections that we've heard about this morning and the diversity of voting equipment. Also, in most cases voting equipment is not connected to the Internet and therefore cannot be attacked through cyber space. Also it is important to keep in mind that three out of four ballots cast in American elections are on paper ballots. Most ballots cast on touchscreen equipment also have a paper trail that voters can immediately verify their votes and that election officials can use for audits and recounts. There are also several redundancies in the testing and certification of voting equipment. It's important to realize that voting equipment is not only used on Election Day. Its functionality is tested several times during the process. In short, the 2016 elections taught us that the potential for disrupting election processes and technology by foreign or domestic actors is a serious and increasing concern. However, we as State election directors believe that continued cooperation and more effective communication, along with continued vigilance and innovation, will ensure the integrity of our voting processes and election results. Again, we look forward to working with our Federal partners as we plan for elections going forward. Thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts and I'd be happy to answer any questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Haas follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Burr. Thank you, Mr. Haas. Mr. Sandvoss. STATEMENT OF STEVE SANDVOSS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS Mr. Sandvoss. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, and distinguished members of the Committee. As Director of the State Board of Elections, I'd just like to briefly describe what our agency does. We are an independent bipartisan agency created by the 1970 Illinois Constitution, charged with general supervision over the election and registration laws in the State of Illinois. As all of you seem to be aware, almost a year ago today, on June 23rd, the Illinois State Board of Elections was the victim of a malicious cyber attack of unknown origin against the Illinois voter registration system database. Because of the initial low-volume nature of the attack, the State Board of Elections staff did not become aware of it at first. Almost three weeks later, on July 12th, State Board of Elections IT staff was made aware of performance issues with the IVRS database server. The processor's usage had spiked to 100 percent with no explanation. Analysis of the server logs revealed that the heavy load was a result of rapidly repeated database queries on the application status page of our paperless online voter application website. Additionally, the server log showed the database queries were malicious in nature. It was a form of cyber attack known as SQL, which is ``structured query language injection.'' SQL injections are essentially unauthorized malicious database queries entered into a data field in a web-based application. We later determined that these SQLs originated from several foreign-based IP addresses. SBE programmers immediately introduced code changes to eliminate this particular vulnerability in our website. The following day, on July 13th, the SBE IT made the decision to take the website and IVRS database offline to investigate the severity of the attack. SBE staff maintained the ability to log and view all site access attempts. Malicious traffic from the IP addresses continued, though it was blocked at the firewall level. Firewall monitoring indicated that the attackers were hitting SBE IP addresses five times per second, 24 hours a day. These attacks continued until August 12th, when they abruptly ceased. SBE staff began working to determine the extent of the breech, analyzing the integrity of the IVRS database and introducing security enhancements to the IVRS web servers and database. A week later, on July 19th, we notified the Illinois General Assembly of the security breech in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act. In addition, we notified the Attorney General's office. On July 21st, the State Board of Elections' IT staff completed security enhancements and began to bring the IVRS system back on line. A week after that, on July 28th, both the Illinois registration system and the paperless online voting application became totally functional once again. Since the attack occurred, the State Board of Elections has maintained the following ongoing activities. The DHS scans the State Board of Elections systems for vulnerabilities on a weekly basis. The Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology, which is a statewide entity that coordinates the IT systems of many of the Illinois State agencies, continuously monitors activity on the Illinois Century Network, which is the general network that provides firewall protection for the State computer systems. This Department of Innovation and Technology, also called DOIT, provided cyber security awareness training for all State of Illinois employees, ours included. Now the State Board of Election's IT staff continues to monitor web server and firewall logs on a daily basis. And in addition, virus protection software is downloaded also on a daily basis. As a result of informing the Illinois Attorney General's office of the breach, the State Board of Elections was contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and we have fully cooperated with the FBI in their ongoing investigation. The FBI advised that we work with the Department of Homeland Security's United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team to ensure that there is no ongoing malicious activity on any of the SBE systems. They also confirmed--that is, the Department of Homeland Security also confirmed--that there's no ongoing malicious activity occurring in SBE computer systems. To comply with the Personal Information Protection Act, nearly 76,000 registered voters were contacted as potential victims of the data breach. The SBE provided information to these individuals on steps to take if they felt that they were the victims of identity theft. Additionally, the SBE developed an online tool to inform affected individuals of the specific information that was included in their voter record that may have been compromised. As far as looking for future concerns, one of the concerns facing our State and many others we believe is aging voting equipment. The Help America Vote Act established requirements for voting equipment, but while initial funding was made available to replace the old punch-card equipment, additional funding has not been further appropriated. If additional funding is not available, we would like to receive authorization to use the State's existing HAVA funds to allow spending on enhanced security across all election-related systems. The IVRS database is a Federal mandate through the Help America Vote Act. Cyber attacks targeting end users are also of particular concern. Security training funded and provided by a Federal entity such as the EAC or DHS would also be beneficial in our view. In addition, any guidance or recommendations as to methods for the protection of registration and voting systems from cyber intrusions are always welcome. Thank you for the time, and I'm happy to answer any questions. [The prepared statement of Mr. Sandvoss follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Burr. Thank you, Mr. Sandvoss. Dr. Halderman. STATEMENT OF J. ALEX HALDERMAN, Ph.D., PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Dr. Halderman. Chairman Burr, Vice Chairman Warner, and members of the Committee: Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today about the security of U.S. elections. I'm a Professor of Computer Science and have spent the last 10 years studying the electronic voting systems that our Nation relies on. My conclusion from that work is that our highly computerized election infrastructure is vulnerable to sabotage and even to cyber attacks that could change votes. These realities risk making our election results more difficult for the American people to trust. I know America's voting machines are vulnerable because my colleagues and I have hacked them repeatedly as part of a decade of research studying the technology that operates elections and learning how to make it stronger. We've created attacks that can spread from machine to machine, like a computer virus, and silently change election outcomes. We've studied touchscreen and optical scan systems, and in every single case we found ways for attackers to sabotage machines and to steal votes. These capabilities are certainly within reach for America's enemies. As you know, states choose their own voting technology and, while some states are doing well with security, others are alarmingly vulnerable. This puts the entire Nation at risk. In close elections, an attacker can probe the most important swing states or swing counties, find areas with the weakest protection, and strike there. In a close election year, changing a few votes in key localities could be enough to tip national results. The key lesson from 2016 is that these threats are real. We've heard that Russian efforts to target voter registration systems struck 21 states, and we've seen reports detailing efforts to spread an attack from an election technology vendor to local election offices. Attacking vendors and municipalities could have put Russia in a position to sabotage equipment on Election Day, causing machines or poll books to fail, and causing long lines or disruption. They could have engineered this chaos to have a partisan effect by striking places that lean heavily towards one candidate. Some say the fact that voting machines aren't directly connected to the Internet makes them secure, but unfortunately, this is not true. Voting machines are not as distant from the Internet as they may seem. Before every election, they need to be programmed with races and candidates. That programming is created on a desktop computer, then transferred to voting machines. If Russia infiltrated these election management computers, it could have spread a vote-stealing attack to vast numbers of machines. I don't know how far Russia got or whether they managed to interfere with equipment on Election Day, but there's no doubt that Russia has the technical ability to commit widespread attacks against our voting system, as do other hostile nations. I agree with James Comey when he warned here two weeks ago: We know they're coming after America, and they'll be back. We must start preparing now. Fortunately, there's a broad consensus among cybersecurity experts about measures that would make America's election infrastructure much harder to attack. I've co-signed a letter that I've entered into the record from over 100 leading computer scientists, security experts, and election officials that recommends three essential steps. First, we need to upgrade obsolete and vulnerable voting machines, such as paperless touchscreens, and replace them with optical scanners that count paper ballots. This is a technology that 36 states already use. Paper provides a physical record of the vote that simply can't be hacked. President Trump made this point well on Fox News the morning after--the morning of the election. He said, ``There's something really nice about the old paper ballot system. You don't worry about hacking.'' Second, we need to use the paper to make sure that the computer results are right. This is a common-sense quality control and it should be routine. Using what's known as a risk- limiting audit, officials can check a small, random sample of the ballots to quickly and affordably provide high assurance that the election outcome was correct. Only two states, Colorado and New Mexico, currently conduct audits that are robust enough to reliably detect cyber attacks. Lastly, we need to harden our systems against sabotage and raise the bar for attacks of all sorts by conducting comprehensive threat assessments and applying cybersecurity best practices to the design of voting equipment and the management of elections. These are affordable fixes. Replacing insecure paperless voting machines nationwide would cost $130 million to $400 million. Running risk-limiting audits nationally for Federal elections would cost less than $20 million a year. These amounts are vanishingly small compared to the national security improvement they buy. State and local election officials have an extremely difficult job, even without having to worry about cyber attacks by hostile governments. But the Federal Government can make prudent investments to help them secure elections and uphold voters' confidence. We all want election results that we can trust. If Congress works closely with the states, we can upgrade our election infrastructure in time for 2018 and 2020. But if we fail to act, I think it's only a matter of time until a major election is disrupted or stolen in a cyber attack. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today and for your leadership on this critical matter. I look forward to answering any questions. [The prepared statement of Dr. Halderman follows:] [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] Chairman Burr. Dr. Halderman, thank you. The Chair would recognize himself for five minutes. Members will be recognized by seniority. Secretary Lawson, in how many states is the secretary of state in charge of the elections process, do you know? Ms. Lawson. Yes, sir. It's 40. I'm sorry. Yes, sir. It's 40. Chairman Burr. Okay. Would you be specific: What do the secretary of states do--what is it they do not like about elections being designated critical infrastructure? Ms. Lawson. The most important issue, sir, is that there have been no clear parameters set and, even after the three calls that we had with Secretary Jeh Johnson before the designation was made, we consistently asked for what would be different if the designation was made and how we would communicate. Would it be any different---- Chairman Burr. So nothing has negatively happened except that you don't have the guidance to know what to do? Ms. Lawson. Nothing has negatively happened to this date, but also nothing positive has happened. Chairman Burr. Got it. Got it. Mr. Sandvoss, Illinois is one of the few states that have publicly been identified. I guess that's in part because you took the initiative to do it. You gave a good chronology: 23 June, first sign; 12 July, State IT staff took action; 12 August, the attacks stopped. At what point was the State of Illinois contacted by any Federal entity about their system having been attacked or was it the State of Illinois that contacted the Federal Government? Mr. Sandvoss. We were contacted by the FBI--I don't have the exact date, but it was after we had referred the matter to the Attorney General's office. My guess would be probably a week after. Chairman Burr. A week after---- Mr. Sandvoss. After the AG was notified by us of this breach. Chairman Burr. And the AG was notified approximately when? Mr. Sandvoss. On July 19th. Chairman Burr. July 19th. Okay. At what point did the State of Illinois know that it was the Russians? Mr. Sandvoss. Actually, to this day we don't know with certainty that it was the Russians. We've never been told by any official entity. The only one that we're aware of that was investigating was the FBI and they have not told us definitively that it was the Russians. Our IT staff was able to identify, I think it was, seven IP addresses from a foreign location, I believe it was The Netherlands. But that doesn't mean that the attack originated in the Netherlands. We have no idea where it originated from. Chairman Burr. Did your IT staff have some initial assessments on their own? Mr. Sandvoss. No, because I think any--anything of that nature would have been speculative and we didn't want to do that. I think we wanted to leave that to the professional investigators. Chairman Burr. You gave an update on what you're currently doing to enhance the security: DHS weekly security checks. Has the Federal--in your estimation, has the Federal Government responded appropriately to date? Mr. Sandvoss. I believe they have, yes. I've heard nothing from our IT division and they'd be the persons that would know. I've heard nothing from them that the DHS's work in that matter has been less than satisfactory. Chairman Burr. Let me ask all of you, except for you, Mr. Sandvoss: Do you believe the extent of cyber threats to election systems should be made public before the next election cycle? Should we identify those states that were targeted, Mr. Haas? Mr. Haas. I think as election directors we're certainly sensitive to the balance that Homeland Security and others need to make. I think so far, as far as we've gone, we want to know as the victims or potential victims. And then I think as part of the coordinating council and designation of critical infrastructure, there has to be a conversation amongst the election---- Chairman Burr. Is there a right of the public in your State to know? Mr. Haas. Yes, I believe there is. If there was a hack into our system, I think that we would certainly want to consult our statutes and so forth, but we would--we believe in transparency. We would want to let the public know. Chairman Burr. Dr. Halderman. Dr. Halderman. I think the public needs details about these attacks and about the vulnerabilities of the system, in order to make informed decisions about how we can make the system better and to provide the resources that election officials need. So, yes. Chairman Burr. Okay. Secretary Lawson. Ms. Lawson. I lay awake at night worrying about public confidence in our election systems, and so I think we need to be very careful and we need to balance the information, because the worst thing that we can do is make people think that their vote doesn't count or it could be canceled out. And so if telling the public that, you know, that these attacks are out there and our systems are vulnerable and it doesn't undermine confidence, it makes them know that we are doing everything we possibly can to stop those attacks, I'd be in favor of it. Chairman Burr. I take for granted none of you at the table have evidence that vote tallies were altered in the 2016 election? Dr. Halderman. Correct. Chairman Burr. Dr. Halderman, before I recognize the Vice Chairman real quickly: When you and your colleagues hacked election systems, did you get caught? Dr. Halderman. We hacked election systems as part of academic research, where we had machines in our facilities---- Chairman Burr. I get that. Did you get caught? Did they see your intrusion into their systems? Dr. Halderman. The one instance when I was invited to hack a real voting system while people were watching, was in Washington, D.C., in 2010, and in that instance it took less than 48 hours for us to change all the votes and we were not caught. Chairman Burr. Vice Chairman. Vice Chairman Warner. I'd like to thank all the witnesses for their testimony. I find a little stunning, Mr. Sandvoss, your answer. I don't know--I think if you saw the preceding panel, you had the DHS and the FBI unambiguously say that it was the Russians who hacked into these 21 systems, and I find it a little strange that they've not relayed that information to you. What we discovered in the earlier testimony is that we finally got public disclosure that 21 states were attacked, and under questioning from Senator Harris we found that, even though we know those 21 states were attempted to be hacked into, or doors rattled or whatever analogy you want to use, in many cases the State election officials, whether the State directors or the secretaries of state, may not even have been notified. I find that stunning. And clearly lots of local elected officials, local election officials, where the activities really take place, haven't been notified. So I've got a series of questions and I'd ask for fairly brief responses. Dr. Halderman, can you just again restate--as Senator King mentioned in the earlier testimony, you don't need to disrupt a whole system. You could disrupt a single jurisdiction in a State, and if you could in effect wipe that ledger clean, you could invalidate potentially not just that local election, but then the results at the State, the Congressional level, the states, and ultimately the Nation, is that not correct? Dr. Halderman. Yes, that's correct. Vice Chairman Warner. So we are not--while it's important and I believe in our decentralized system, we are only as strong as our weakest link. Is that not correct? Dr. Halderman. That's correct. Vice Chairman Warner. Mr. Haas and Secretary Lawson, do you believe that all 21 states that were attacked, that the State election officials are aware? Ms. Lawson. I can't answer that question, sir. I'm not certain. I will tell you that Indiana has not been notified. I don't know if we're even on the list. Mr. Haas. I don't know for sure, except that DHS did indicate in a teleconference that all the states that were attacked have been notified. Vice Chairman Warner. We were told earlier that that's not the case. We were told that they may have been--the vendors may have been notified. So do you know whether Wisconsin was attacked? Mr. Haas. We have not been told that we were--that there was an attack on Wisconsin. Vice Chairman Warner. Are you comfortable, either one of you, with not having that knowledge? Ms. Lawson. We are hypersensitive about our security and I would say that when the FBI sent the notice in September for states to look for certain IP addresses to see if their systems had been penetrated or attempted to be penetrated, we absolutely searched. In fact, we looked at 15,500,000 log-ins that had happened in our system since the 1st of January that year. So we believe that our system has not been hacked. Mr. Haas. I would also state that both our office and the chief information officer of the State and his office would likely be able to detect if the system was hacked. Vice Chairman Warner. Well just, we've got the two leading State election officials not knowing whether their states were one of the 21 that at least the Russians probed--let me finish, please. And you know, I see--I understand the balance. But the notion that State election officials wouldn't know, that local election officials clearly haven't been notified--I appreciate the Chairman's offer. The Chairman and I are going to write a letter to all the states: If you view yourself as victims, I think there is a public obligation to disclose. Again, not to re-litigate 2016, but to make sure that we're prepared for 2017, where I have State elections in my State this year, and 2018. And to do otherwise--because there are some, there are some still in the political process, that believe this whole Russian incursion into our elections is a witch hunt and fake news. So I could very easily see some local elected officials saying: ``This is not a problem, this is not a bother; I don't need to tighten up my security procedures at all.'' And that would do a huge, huge disservice to the very trust, Secretary Lawson, that you say you want to try to present and provide for our voters. So I hope when you receive the letter from our--and we'll write this on a confidential basis, but that you would urge your colleagues to come forward, again not to embarrass any State. But I find it totally unacceptable, one, that the public doesn't know, that local elected officials--local election officials don't know, that you as two, as the leaders of the State election officials, don't even know whether your states were part of the 21 that has been testified by the DHS that at least they were, if not looked at, door jiggled, or actually, as the case in Illinois, where actual information from the voter registration efforts were exfiltrated. So my hope is that you will work with us on a cooperative basis and we want to make sure that the DHS and others are better at sharing information and you get those classified briefings that you deserve. Chairman Burr. Senator Risch. Senator Risch. Thank you very much. Mr. Sandvoss, July 12th was the date that you first discovered that you had issues, is that right? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes, that's correct. Senator Risch. And that was a result of a high-volume spike. Is that correct? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes, that is correct. Senator Risch. Then when you looked at it, you found out that the intrusion attempts actually had started June 23rd, is that correct? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. Senator Risch. So--and those were low-volume spikes, starting on June 23rd? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. Senator Risch. All right. So if they had never cranked up the volume, is it fair to say you would have never discovered it or probably wouldn't have discovered it? Mr. Sandvoss. I would say it would probably not have been discovered, certainly not right away. And if it was--the volume was low enough, even an analysis of our server logs might not catch something like that, because it wouldn't stand out. So I think the answer to your question is yes. Senator Risch. Then you said 12--or seven days later, the 19th, you notified the Attorney General. Is that right? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes, correct. Senator Risch. That was the Illinois Attorney General, not the U.S. Attorney General, is that correct? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. State law requires that we notify the Attorney General in these instances. Senator Risch. So then the next thing that happened is you were contacted by the FBI. Is that correct? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. Senator Risch. All right. So the question I've got--I'm just trying to get an understanding of the facts--are you assuming that the Illinois AG contacted the FBI, or do you know that or not know that, or---- Mr. Sandvoss. I don't know that for sure, but I would suspect that they probably did, because how else would the FBI know? Senator Risch. Right. Well, and that's kind of where I was getting, is that was not the result of some Federal analysis, that there wasn't a Federal analysis of this that turned up what had actually happened. Is that a fair statement? Mr. Sandvoss. I believe so, yes. Senator Risch. Okay. You then did some things to try to mitigate what had happened. Have you shared this with other states as to what you had done, in order to, I don't know, develop a best practices, if you would? Mr. Sandvoss. We didn't have any formal notification to all 50 states, no. I think our focus at that time was trying to repair the damage and assess, you know, what needed to be done, especially with respect to the voters who had their information accessed. I believe that once the FBI became aware of this, I know they contacted the different states. I don't believe our Attorney General's office did, although I don't know that for certain. But we did not have any formal communication with all 50 states regarding this. Senator Risch. And do you believe that you have developed a best-practices action after this attack that you've described for us? Mr. Sandvoss. I believe so, yes. Senator Risch. Do you think it would be appropriate for you to get that out through the secretary of states organization or other organizations, so that other states could have that? Mr. Sandvoss. Certainly. Absolutely. Senator Risch. Okay. Mr. Halderman, Your hacking that you've described for us, would your ability--if you were sitting in Russia right now and wanted to do the same thing that you had done, would that ability be dependent upon the machines or whatever system is used being connected to the Internet? Dr. Halderman. That ability would depend on whether pieces of election IT equipment, IT offices that are where the election programming is prepared, are ever connected to Internet. The machines themselves don't have to be directly connected to the Internet for a remote attacker to target them. Senator Risch. So would you recommend that the voting system be disconnected from the Internet, that it be a standalone system that can't be accessed from the outside? Dr. Halderman. It's a best practice, certainly, to isolate vote tabulation equipment as much as possible from the Internet, including isolating the systems that are used to program it. But other pieces of election infrastructure that are critical, such as electronic poll books or online registration systems, do sometimes need to be connected to Internet--to systems that have Internet access. Senator Risch. But that wouldn't necessarily require that it be connected to the Internet for the actual voting process. Is that right? Dr. Halderman. That's right. Senator Risch. And then the extrication of that information off of the voting machine, would that be fair? Dr. Halderman. I think that's fair to say. Senator Risch. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I think all of this really needs to be drilled down a little bit further, because it seems to me, with this experience, there's probably some pretty good information where you could put a firewall in place to stop it, or at least minimize it. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Senator Wyden. Senator Wyden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank all of you. I want to start with you, Professor Halderman. What are the dangers of manipulation of voter registration databases, particularly if it isn't apparent until Election Day when people show up at the polls to vote? Dr. Halderman. I'm concerned that manipulating voter registration databases could be used to try to sabotage the election process on Election Day. If voters are removed from the registration database and then they show up on Election Day, that's going to cause problems. If voters are added to the voter registration database, that could be used to conduct further attacks. Senator Wyden. Let me ask--and this can be directed at any of you. I'm trying to get my arms around this role of contractors and subcontractors and vendors who are involved in elections. Any idea, even a ball park number, of how many of these people there are? 10, 70, 200? Dr. Halderman. Vendors that host the voter registration system? Vice Chairman Warner. Yes. Dr. Halderman. I'm sorry, Senator, I don't have a number. Ms. Lawson. Sir, I don't have an exact number either, but I will tell you, in Indiana, for an example, we have six different voting system types. Counties make that decision on their own. But they are all certified by our voting system technical oversight program. Senator Wyden. That was my main question. So somebody is doing certification over these contractors and subcontractors and equipment vendors and the like? Does that include voting machines, by the way? Ms. Lawson. It does. Most states will have a mechanism to certify the voting machines that they're using, the electronic poll books they're using, the tabulation machines that they're using, making sure that they comply with Federal and State law, and making sure that they have the audit processes in place. Senator Wyden. So do you all have a high degree of confidence that these certification processes are not leaving this other world of subcontractors and the like vulnerable? Dr. Halderman. I have several concerns about the certification processes, including that some states do not require certification to Federal standards; that the Federal standards that we have are unfortunately long overdue for an update and have significant gaps when it comes to security; and that the certification process doesn't necessarily cover all of the actors that are involved in that process, including the day-to-day operations of companies that do pre-election programming. Senator Wyden. One last question. We Oregonians and a number of my colleagues are supportive of our efforts to take vote-by-mail national. And we've had it. I was in effect the country's first Senator elected by vote-by-mail in 1996. We've got a paper trail. We've got air gap computers. We've got plenty of time to correct voter registration problems if there are any. Aren't those the key elements of trying to get on top of this? Because it seems to me, particularly the paper trail--if you want to send a message to the people who are putting at risk the integrity of our electoral institutions, having a paper trail is just fundamental to being able to have the backup we need. I think you're nodding affirmatively, Professor Halderman, so I'm kind of inclined--or one of you two at the end were nodding affirmatively, and I'll quit while I'm ahead if that was the case. But would either of you like to take that on? Dr. Halderman. Vote-by-mail has significant cybersecurity benefits. It's very difficult to hack a vote-by-mail system from an office in Moscow. Whether vote-by-mail is appropriate for every State in every context is in our system of course a matter for the states, but I think it offers positive security benefits. Senator Wyden. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Burr. Senator Blunt. Senator Blunt. Dr. Halderman, on that last answer to that last question, how do you count vote-by-mail ballots? Dr. Halderman. Generally, they would be counted using optical scanners. Senator Blunt. Exactly. So you count them the same way you count ballots that aren't vote-by-mail in almost every jurisdiction? Dr. Halderman. If the optical scan ballots are subsequently audited, you can get high security from that process, but yes. Senator Blunt. Well that's a different--that's a different question. Your question there is do you prefer paper ballots and an audit trail, and I do too. But let's not assume that the vote-by-mail ballots are counted any differently. They're counted probably at a more central location, but that doesn't mean that all the manipulation you talked about that we need to protect against wouldn't happen in a vote-by-mail election. You've got a way to go back and you've got a paper trail to count. Dr. Halderman. That's correct. There are three things you need: paper, auditing, and otherwise good security practices. Senator Blunt. While I've got you there, on auditing, how would you audit a non-paper system? If it's a touchscreen system--you mentioned Colorado, and New Mexico already did a required sample audit, which I'm certainly not opposed to that if that's what states want to do, or it's the best thing to do. How would you do a non-paper audit? Dr. Halderman. Senator, I think it would be difficult or impossible to audit non-paper systems with the technology that we use in the United States to a high level of assurance. Senator Blunt. So even if you--if you don't have something to audit, it's pretty hard to audit a system that counted--that didn't leave a trail. Dr. Halderman. It's basically impossible. Senator Blunt. So, Mr. Sandvoss, in Illinois do you certify counting systems? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes, we do. Senator Blunt. And Secretary Lawson, do you certify counting systems? Ms. Lawson. Yes, sir. Senator Blunt. Mr. Haas, in your, your jurisdiction, somebody is certifying those systems that you use? Mr. Haas. We both rely on the EAC certification and then our commission does a testing protocol and then approves the equipment to be used in the State of Wisconsin. Senator Blunt. And back in Illinois, do you then monitor in any way that counting system while it's doing the actual counting? Mr. Sandvoss. No, the actual counting done on Election Day, Election Night rather, is done locally at the county clerk's offices or board of election commissioner offices. We certify the voting equipment. They have to apply for certification and approval, which we conduct a fairly rigorous test of the voting equipment. But then in actual practice, other than--we do conduct pre-election tests of the voting equipment on a random basis before each election, but there--it's a limited number of jurisdictions. Senator Blunt. And do you do that in a way that allows you from your central office to get into the local system? Or do you go to the local jurisdictions or just monitor how they count that--how they, how they check that counting system? Mr. Sandvoss. When we do our pre-election tests, we actually visit the jurisdiction. Senator Blunt. All right. Secretary Lawson, similar? Ms. Lawson. Similar. However, the State does not go into the counties, but the counties are required to do a public test and, as I mentioned, it's public. And so they're required to do testing on the machines, the tabulation. There's a bipartisan election board that's there---- Senator Blunt. I guess the point I'd want to drive home there is that not opening that door to the counting system--if you don't have the door, nobody else can get through that door as well. But there's monitoring, there's local testing. I don't suggest at all that Dr. Halderman's comments aren't important or something we should guard against. I was an election official for 20 years, including the chief election official for 8 of those, and something--as we were transitioning to these systems, something I was always concerned about is what could possibly be done that could be done and undetected. One of the reasons I always liked the audit trail--that obviously, Dr. Halderman, you do, you do too, is that you do have something to go back, if you have a reason to go back, and really determine what happened on Election Day. Let's talk for just a moment about the much more open registration system. Secretary Lawson, you said you had 15,500 logins. I believe that was--talk about logging--what are they logging into there? The statewide voter registration system that you maintain a copy of? Ms. Lawson. The 92 county clerks in Indiana are connected to the statewide voter registration system, and that 15,500,000 logins reflected the work that they did that year. Senator Blunt. 15,500,000? Ms. Lawson. 15,500,000. Senator Blunt. So obviously that's a system that has lots of people coming in and out of that system all the time. Do local jurisdictions, like if the library does registration, do you have counties where they can also put those registrations directly into the system? Ms. Lawson. Other than the counties, no, sir. But we do have Indianavoters.com, where a voter can go on and register themselves. And it's a record that is compared to the DMV record, and then the counties will find that information in their hopper the next day. And then they will--or their computer system, and then the next day they will have the ability to determine whether or not the application is correct. Senator Blunt. Do all of your jurisdictions, the three jurisdictions here reflected, have some kind of provisional voting? If you get to the voting place on Election Day and your address is wrong, or your name is wrong, or it doesn't occur-- it doesn't appear at all, do you have a way somebody can cast a ballot before they leave? Ms. Lawson. Yes, sir. Senator Blunt. And in Illinois? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes, we do. Mr. Haas. We have provisional ballots, but they are very limited. We are not an NVRA State. And we also have Election Day registration, so people can register at the polls. Senator Blunt. So, the failure to have your name properly on the--I understand, Chairman, and I also noticed the time on others. But just, the registration system is much more open than the tallying system, that doesn't mean the tallying system doesn't need to be further protected. But the registration system, the idea that somebody gets into the registration system--there are plenty of ways to do that. Unfortunately, we think now other countries and governments may be doing that as well. Chairman Burr. Senator King. Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Halderman, you're pretty good at hacking voting machines, by your testimony. Do you think the Russians are as good as you? Dr. Halderman. The Russians have the resources of a nation state. I would say their capabilities would significantly exceed mine. Senator King. I expected that was going to be your answer, but I wasn't sure whether your modesty would--but I think that's an important point, because you testified here today that you were able to hack into a voting machine in 48 hours, change the results, and nobody knew you had done it. And if you could do it, I think the point is the Russians could do it if they chose. And we've been talking a lot about registrations lists. My understanding is that quite often a voter registration list at some point in the process is linked up with--the computer that has the voter registration list is linked up with configuring the voting machines, and perhaps even tallying votes. Is that true? Can any of you---- Ms. Lawson. No, sir. Senator King. There's no connection between the registration list and the voting machines? Ms. Lawson. No. Senator King. Illinois? Is that---- Mr. Sandvoss. Not in Illinois, no. Senator King. Okay. Mr. Haas. That's correct. Senator King. Then I was mistaken. Yes, Dr. Halderman? Dr. Halderman. I believe that depends on the specific equipment involved. There may be some designs of voting systems where the sign-in and the vote counting system are linked. Senator King. But of course, if, as you testified I think, if the voting registration list is tampered with in some way on Election Day, it would be chaos if names disappeared, people arrived at the polls and their names weren't on the list. Isn't that correct, Ms. Lawson? Ms. Lawson. If a person showed up at the polls to vote and their name wasn't on the list, if they were expecting they would be given a provisional ballot, I think the biggest danger is that the lines at the polls would increase significantly if there was a large number of folks who had to do that in each precinct. Senator King. Right, that was what I was referring to. On August 1 of 2016, press reports have indicated that there was an FBI notification to all of their field offices about the danger of cyber intrusions into voting systems. Supposedly, those were passed on to State election systems. Did you three get something from the FBI around August 1st that gave IP addresses and some warnings about what should be done? Mr. Sandvoss. Yes, we did receive an FBI flash. It was in August, and you're saying the 1st. I believe that was it. Senator King. That was, yes, I understand that was the date of it. Ms. Lawson, did you receive that? Ms. Lawson. Yes, Indiana received a notice from the FBI. Mr. Haas. We did as well. Senator King. So there is some interconnection. I mean, one of the things that I'm sort of hearing, and I'm frankly appreciative and happy that you all did receive that notice, but there seems to be a lack of information-sharing that goes on that we really need to be sure that--for example, if you learn--if something happens in Illinois, some system whereby you can alert your colleagues across the country to look out for this. And if we learn things here in Washington, if the FBI learns things, that they can alert people around the country, because the best time to deal with this is before the election. After the election or on Election Day is much more difficult. Dr. Halderman. Dr. Halderman. Yes, I would support further information sharing. Senator King. And then finally, we've talked about what we do about this. Paper trails has come up. Is that the principal defense? Is that--Dr. Halderman, what if--I asked the question to the prior panel. What would you tell my elections clerk in Brunswick, Maine, would be the three things most important that they should do, or my Secretary of State in Maine, to protect themselves against a threat we know is coming? Dr. Halderman. The most important things are to make sure we have votes recorded on paper, paper ballots, which just cannot be changed in a cyber attack, that we look at enough of that paper in a post-election, risk-limiting audit, to know that they haven't--the electronic records haven't been changed; and then, to make sure we are generally increasing the level of our cyber security practice. Information-sharing is an example of a good and recommended practice, as are firewalling systems and other things that have been suggested. Senator King. One final question. Is it possible--and there are some press reports about this--a cyber attack on the vendors of these machines, to somehow tamper with the machines before they go out to the states. Is that a risk? Dr. Halderman. I would be concerned about that. And in fact the small number of vendors is an example of how our system in practice is not quite as decentralized as it may appear, that attacks spreading via vendors or from vendors to their customers could be a way to reach voting equipment over a very large area. Senator King. And there have been press reports that that in fact, was attempted in 2016. Dr. Halderman. Yes, that's correct. Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing. This is such important information for the public and for our democracy. I appreciate your work here. Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator. Senator Harris. Senator Harris. Thank you. So there's a saying that I'm sure many of you have heard, which is the you know the difference between being hacked and not being hacked, is knowing you've been hacked. And so I appreciate, Dr. Halderman, the recommendations that you and your colleagues have made, because it also seems to cover the various elements of what we need to do to protect ourselves as a country in terms of our elections, which is prevention, and then there's the issue of detection and also resilience. Once we--if we discover that we've been manipulated, let's have the ability to stand back up as quickly as possible. So I have a few questions in that regard. First of all, have each of you--you received for the states, received a notification from the FBI? Is that correct? Ms. Lawson. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Haas. Yes, yes. Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. Senator Harris. And were any of you also notified by DHS? Mr. Sandvoss? Mr. Sandvoss. We've had communications with DHS. I don't recall how they were initiated. But I do know that there have been some conference calls with them, and it may have been through the FBI that that occurred. Senator Harris. And I'm speaking of before the 2016 election. Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. Senator Harris. Yes. Mr. Sandvoss. Yes. Senator Harris. Secretary Lawson. Ms. Lawson. Yes, we had--we did have conversations with Department of Homeland Security. However, it was through our national association. It was not a direct contact with the State. Senator Harris. Thank you. Mr. Haas. We were one of the states that took up DHS on their offers to do the cyber hygiene scan. We did have a number of communications with, I believe, a point person in their Chicago office. The FBI alert I think was about a specific incident, but our communications with DHS were more about general steps that could be taken to protect our systems. Senator Harris. So as a follow-up to this hearing, if each of you, to the extent that you can recall the nature of those conversations with DHS before the election, if you could share that with the Committee that would be helpful, so we can figure out how notifications might be more helpful to you in the future. Hopefully they're not necessary, but if necessary. Can you, Ms. Lawson, tell me--Secretary Lawson--what in your opinion are the pros and cons of requiring states to report to the Federal Government if there's been a breach or a hack? What can you imagine would be the pros and cons of a policy that would require that? Ms. Lawson. Well, the pro would be that if there--if, for an example, the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security has better ways to counter those attacks, or to make sure that the reconnaissance that's done after such an attack is more sophisticated than the states, then obviously that would be a pro. Indiana did not take the opportunity to have DHS do our cyber cleaning because we felt that we were in better shape than what they could provide for us, so that would be the con. Senator Harris. Okay. And can you, Professor Halderman, tell me--you know, before this last election cycle, there had been a lot of talk through the years in various states--Senator Blunt, I'm sure you were part of those discussions--about the efficacy of online voting, because it would bring convenience, speed, efficiency, accuracy. And now we can see that there will be great, potentially, vulnerabilities by doing that. So can you talk with me a little about, just in terms of policy, is the day of discussing the need for online voting, has that day passed because of the vulnerabilities that are associated with that? Dr. Halderman. I think that online voting, unfortunately, would be painting a bullseye on our election system. Today's technology just does not provide the level of security assurance for an online election that you would need in order for voters to have high confidence. And I say that having myself done--hacked an online voting system that was about to be used in real elections, having found vulnerabilities in online voting systems that are used in other countries. The technology just isn't ready for use. Senator Harris. And isn't that the irony, that the professor of computer engineering and I, who always believed that we need to do more to adopt technology, that government needs to adopt technology, I think we're advocating the good old days of paper voting are the way to go, or at least an emphasis on that, instead of using technology to vote. Can you tell me also--any of you, if you know--it's my understanding that some of the election system vendors have required states to sign agreements that prevent or inhibit independent security testing. Are you familiar with that? Dr. Halderman. That certainly had been something that inhibited attempts by researchers like me to study election systems in the past. Senator Harris. And do you believe that that's a practice that is continuing? Dr. Halderman. I do not--I don't know the answer to that question. Senator Harris. Have any of you had that experience with any of your vendors? Mr. Sandvoss. In Illinois, no, we have not. And I don't think Illinois law would allow such an agreement. Ms. Lawson. I don't believe that would happen in Indiana either, Senator, because in order to sell voting equipment in the State of Indiana it has to be certified. Senator Harris. Right, which would require testing. Ms. Lawson. Yes, which requires testing. Senator Harris. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Chairman Burr. Thank you, Senator Harris. Does any Senators seek additional questions or time? [No response.] Seeing none, let me wrap up. I want to thank all of you for your testimony today. Secretary Lawson, to you. I really encourage you, as the next representative of secretaries of states, to remain engaged with the Federal Government, specifically the Department of Homeland Security. And I think with any transition of an administration there is a handoff and a ramp-up. And I've been extremely impressed with our witness from DHS, who not only was here today, but she has taken the bull by the horns on this issue. And I think you'll see those guidelines very quickly, and I hope that there will be some interaction between secretaries of states, since in 40 states you control the voting process, and you can find a system of Federal guidance and collaboration that works comfortably with every secretary of state in your organization. I think it is absolutely critical that we have not only a collaboration, but a communication, between the Federal Government and the states as it relates to our voting systems. If not, I fear that there would be an attempt to in some way, shape, or form nationalize that. That is not the answer. And I'll continue to point, Mr. Sandvoss, to Illinois as a great example of a State that apparently focused on the IT infrastructure and staff, and didn't wait for the Federal Government to knock on the door and say, hey, you got a problem. You identified your problem, you began to remediate it. At some point, the Federal Government came in as a partner. And I think where we see our greatest strength is to work with states and to chase people like you, Dr. Halderman, who like to break into--no, I'm just kidding with you. Listen, I think what you did is important. And I think the questions that you raised about the fact that you really can target to make the impact of what you're trying to do very, very effective. And that's clearly what campaigns do every day. So we shouldn't be surprised if the Russians actually looked at that or anybody else who wants to intrude into our voting system and our democracy in this country. I've got to admit that the variation of voting methods, six in Indiana, where I don't know how many counties you've got-- I've got 100 counties in North Carolina. It may be that I find out that every county in North Carolina has the power to determine what voting machines, what voting software they have. This can get extremely complicated. Short of trying to standardize everything, which I don't think is the answer, is how do we create the mechanism for the Federal Government to collaborate directly with those heads of election systems in the states and understand up front what we bring to the table and how we bring it, so that we're all looking at the same thing--the integrity of every vote going to exactly who it was intended to do. So, yes, we're going to have debates on paper or electronic. We're going to have debates on what should the Federal role be. At the end of the day, if we haven't got cooperation and collaboration and communication, I will assure you we will be here with another Congress, with another makeup of the Committee, asking the same questions, because we won't have fixed it. But I think that what Dr. Halderman has said to us is, there are some ways that we can collectively approach this to where our certainty of intrusions in the future can go down and the accuracy of the vote totals can be certified. So I thank all the four of you for being here today in our second panel. This hearing is now adjourned. [Whereupon, at 12:36 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.] Supplemental Material [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

Committee Leadership

Tom Cotton

Mark Warner

All Committee Members

Recent Legislation Activity

Hearings & Meetings

Reports & Publications

Committee Resources