Credit: Photo via Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office/Facebook

An investigation into possible “criminal cyberactivity” at Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office says that approximately 58,000 voters had their information hacked.

On May, 3, less than a week after the 2023 Tampa Municipal Runoff Election results were officially certified, the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office announced that a server was “illegally breached.“

The incident launched an investigation involving federal, state and local law enforcement officials.

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Hillsborough officials now say that the breach involved a user illegally accessing voter information used for registration list maintenance.

“The investigation has determined that an unauthorized user appears to have illegally accessed and copied files containing personal identification information, such as social security or driver license numbers, primarily from files used to conduct voter registration list maintenance,” said the statement.

Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Craig Latimer. Credit: Photo via Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office/Facebook

“Voter registration list maintenance is the state-mandated process by which the office continually reviews its voter roll to identify necessary updates,” the statement continued. “It’s important to note that the voter registration system and the ballot tabulation system, which have additional layers of security, were not accessed.”

In a previous statement, Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Craig Latimer reiterated that the breach did not interfere with the recent elections.

“Our voter registration system has multiple layers of protection, monitoring and redundancy,” said Latimer. “Our tabulation system does too, and uses a stand-alone, air gapped server that is not connected to anything else. That server has not been compromised in any way.”

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Office believes the breach may have involved roughly 58,000 registered voters, who will be notified via letter this week about the incident.

Since the criminal investigation is still active, officials did not share any other details, like when the “cyber incident” occurred.

This is a developing story.

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