Russian Hack Into Illinois Election Database Worse Than Thought

(CBS) -- We were hacked, wider and deeper than previously thought. That's the word from Illinois election officials.

2 Investigator Brad Edwards reports.

It was Russian hackers -- on June 23, 2016 -- who attacked servers housed in Springfield. The records of 90,000 voters, including names, birthdates, driver's license numbers, were viewed.

Now, the Illinois State Board of Elections confirms hackers tried to delete or alter some voter data.

"They were successful in getting in … but unable to manipulate any of our data," Ken Menzel, the board's general counsel, tells Edwards.

The state gave the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security unencumbered access to its system, he says.

"We wanted them to be able to share what they found with other states in case there were issues in other states, which is turns out there was," Menzel says.

Bloomberg News reported 39 states were touched by what can be described as a pandemic of election meddling.

Using evidence from Illinois, federal agents were able to develop digital "signatures" -- among them, Internet Protocol addresses used by the attackers, to spot the hackers at work.