The Secretary of State’s office was the target of an unsuccessful cyberattack earlier this month, the agency confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday.
An official with the secretary of state’s office said the attack was an attempt to crash the mail-in voting website, and it was discovered when the agency noticed an increase in attempts to access the site there. nine days ago, October 14. attempts made across the world, which the official said was a coordinated attempt to crash the website.
Security experts were ultimately able to thwart the attack. The secretary of state’s office said it still did not know who was behind the attack, but suggested it may have been a foreign country.
Gabriel Sterling, the office’s director of operations, wrote in a social media post Thursday evening that “this was a big win for our cybersecurity team and our partners. We work every day to protect Georgia voters and our systems.” In another post, he said: “The attack was detected and mitigated quickly. » CNN was the first to report the attempted cyberattack.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is aware of the cyberattack and has been working with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office following the incident, sources confirmed to CBS News. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.
Georgia voters also showed up for early voting, which began on October 15. Early voters broke records this year for the presidential election, the secretary of state’s office said, doubling early voting numbers on day one compared to 2020, with 310,000 ballots cast, up from 136 739 on the first day of early voting in 2020.
Secretary of State of Georgia Brad Raffensperger predicted there would be record turnout in Georgia this year, telling CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” Sunday: “You look at the turnout – we’re reaching almost 1.4 million people who have already voted early or we have accepted their absentee ballots.
Nicole Sganga and
contributed to this report.
