In the days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, a hacker obtained more than 633,000 voter registration files from Maricopa County’s website.
Newly released FBI documents show the intrusion occurred between October 21 and November 2, 2020. The individual used a PowerShell script to exploit a security vulnerability on the county recorder’s website.
The FBI identified a suspect in Fountain Hills, Arizona, interviewed him shortly after the election, and obtained a confession. He admitted discovering the weakness in September 2020, writing a simple computer program to automatically download the files, and running it until the county corrected the issue. He estimated he had collected between 1 million and 2 million files before deleting evidence from his devices.
Despite the confession and the seizure of computers and storage devices, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix declined to prosecute. The Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, and Pinal County Attorney’s Office also declined to bring charges. The FBI closed the case in May 2023, citing those decisions.
