Obama administration officials and others have said repeatedly that actual vote counting during the 2016 election was not affected by the Russian hacking campaign. But that doesn't mean the Russians weren't rooting around in the electronic innards of our voting system.
Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.
The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, recently said: "I haven’t seen, even once, any direct proof of Russian interference in the presidential election.”
