This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Democratic party has admitted that what it first thought was a malicious attempt to hack the party’s massive voter information file turned out to be just a security test.

Bob Lord, the Democratic National Committee’s chief security officer, said on Thursday the attempted hack was “built by a third party as part of a simulated phishing test”.

DNC detects attempt to hack voter database just months before midterms Read more

“The test, which mimicked several attributes of actual attacks on the Democratic party’s voter file, was not authorized by the DNC, VoteBuilder nor any of our vendors,” Lord said.

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A senior Democratic official said on Thursday that the attempted breach was the result of the Michigan Democratic party arranging a phishing attempt to test login security. The state party did not alert the DNC or the internet platform that hosts the data about their test, the official said.

The official was not authorized to speak about sensitive security information and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Alarm bells went off on Wednesday when the DNC said it was notified that hackers created a fake login page to gather usernames and passwords in an attempt to gain access to the party’s voter file, which contains information on tens of millions of voters. The party said the attempt was quickly thwarted by suspending the attacker’s account and that no information was compromised.

With less than three months before the November election, word that the DNC could have been hacked revived concerns about the security of the nation’s election system. Two years ago, Russian operatives sent the DNC into disarray by hacking into its computers and facilitating the release of tens of thousands of emails amid the presidential election.