The US state of Georgia has claimed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has tried to hack its voter registration database.
Georgia’s secretary of state Brian Kemp made the extraordinary allegation in a brief Facebook post:
“Recently, I was made aware of a failed attempt to breach the firewall that protects Georgia's voter registration database by an IP address associated with the Department of Homeland Security. On Thursday morning, I sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson demanding to know why.”
The unsuccessful intrusion attempt was made on 14 November, after the US presidential election, according to the Wall Street Journal.
However, it echoes widespread concerns in the run up to the ballot that outside parties were trying to sway or at least undermine the final result.
The Kremlin was directly blamed for data stealing attacks which resulted in confidential Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails being leaked online.
The FBI was also forced to warn election officials nationwide after several state-level voter databases were breached.
The Department of Homeland Security offered its help to state officials at the time to bolster their defenses. However, it’s thought that Georgia resisted these attempts to help, believing the Obama administration to be over-exaggerating the scale of the problem in order to interfere in state matters.
“The question remains whether the federal government will subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security," Republican Kemp told Politico in August.
In the end there is little evidence to suggest hackers managed to alter the election result, despite the Green Party seeking recounts in several states.
It could be that whoever tried to infiltrate the Georgia voter registration database simply spoofed the DHS IP address in question.