Russia election hacking hearings to focus on state level

The Senate and House intelligence committees on Wednesday will hold two open hearings examining Russian hacking efforts during the 2016 election, featuring testimony from current and former Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials as well as state election directors.

The hearings represent the most robust effort to date to elicit public testimony from state election officials concerning what federal officials have described as an aggressive and sustained effort by Russia to interfere with the 2016 election.

Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, on Tuesday sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly pressing him to publicly disclose "which states were targeted, to ensure that they are fully aware of the threat, and to make certain that their cyber defenses are able to neutralize this danger.”

"We are not made safer by keeping the scope and breadth of these attacks secret,” Warner added.

The Senate committee on Wednesday will hear testimony from Steve Sandvoss, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Elections. Sandvoss is expected to walk the committee through a cyberattack last July that allowed hackers to breach a database of as many as 200,000 voter records.

The board informed the state attorney general’s office of the cyberattack. An information-technology report to the board in August said the FBI was "highly confident” that no voter data had been altered.