Key battleground state's election website targeted by cyberattack: report

Georgia’ssecretary of state’s office was reportedly targeted by an unsuccessful cyberattack from a foreign country.

Hackers tried to knock out the office's website for absentee ballots, CNN reported Wednesday.

“It slowed our systems down for a little bit, but it never stopped our systems from working,” Gabe Sterling, who works in the secretary of state’s office, told the news outlet.

He said the attack had all the "hallmarks" of being from a "foreign power" or entity. The state was able to prevent the attack with the help of a tech firm. He did not say which country was thought to be behind the attempt.

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Sterling said it felt like a "probing attack" to see how the state would respond.

The report comes three months after President Joe Biden created a new board to investigate a devastating Russian intelligence cyber espionage attack from 2021, which was one of the largest in history against U.S. government agencies.

In that incident, hackers infiltrated the software company SolarWinds, which serves the federal government and thousands of U.S. companies. The intruders stole intelligence from the National Nuclear Security Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Treasury Department.