The officials of the state election and law enforcement say, hackers have breached databases for election systems in Arizona and Illinois, prompting the FBI to warn states their election boards should conduct vulnerability scans.

Arizona election officials said that, a suspected Russian hacker investigated a voter registration database in the state. According to Ken Menzel, General Counsel for the board, the  hackers accessed a database for the Illinois Board of Elections, compromising up to 200,000 personal voter records in Illinois.

The hack is investigating by the FBI. It was initially occurred in late June and was discovered in July. Officials with the Board of Elections are "highly confident they (the hackers) weren't able to change anything, although the investigation is still going on" said Menzel.

Pamela Smith with Verified Voting, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for election transparency, said that, “We're all very aware that it’s less than 80 days before an important election.”

A spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, Matt Roberts, said that, the state authorities were notified last month by the FBI of the suspected hack, when it was discovered the user name and password of a county election official were being circulated online.

FBI spokesperson Jillian Stickels said in a statement that, "While we cannot comment on specific alerts, what I can say is that in furtherance of public-private partnerships, the FBI routinely advises private industry of various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations. This data is provided in order to help systems administrators guard against the actions of persistent cyber criminals."

“The voter registration databases are completely separate from the system that vote counting system, so they wouldn't impact one and other. Counting systems typically are not online, whereas the registration system is designed to be online in many states,” said Verified Voting's Smith.

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