Georgia secretary of state’s office says it repelled cyberattack

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Georgia secretary of state’s office says it repelled cyberattack

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 ******* was an attempt to ****** the absentee voting website, and it was discovered when the agency noticed a spike in attempts to access the site nine days ago, on Oct. 14. There were over 420,000 attempts made from around the world, which the official said was a coordinated attempt to make the website ******.

Security experts were ultimately able to thwart the *******. The secretary of state’s office said it still does not know who was behind the ******* but suggested it may have been a foreign country. 

Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer for the office,

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Thursday evening in a social media post that “this was a big win for our cyber security team and our partners. We work everyday to protect Georgia voters and our systems.” In a separate

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, he said, “The ******* was detected and mitigated quickly.”

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first reported the cyberattack attempt.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is aware of the cyberattack and worked with the Georgia secretary of state’s office in the aftermath of the incident, sources confirmed to CBS News. The FBI has not responded to a request for comment.

Georgia voters have also been showing up for early voting, which began on Oct. 15. Early voters shattered records this year for the presidential election, the secretary of state’s office said, more than doubling early voting figures from 2020 on the first day, with 310,000 ballots cast, compared with 136,739 on the first day of early voting in 2020.

Georgia Secretary of State 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 almost pushing 1.4 million who’ve already voted early or who we’ve accepted their absentee ballots.”

Nicole Sganga and

Andres Triay

contributed to this report.

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Jared Eggleston

Jared Eggleston is a digital journalist/associate producer at CBS News. Based in Atlanta, he covers a variety of stories from across the region.

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