agent anthony ferrante was director of cyber incident response for president barack obama's national rity council. when you go in to investigate this intrusion that the state of illinois saw, what did you see? >> ferrante: the f.b.i. identified digital fingerprints left by the intruder. think of it as a crime scene, where fingerprints are dusted and pulled. we do the same thing when investigating a computer intrusion. >> whitaker: and your analysis pointed the finger at russia? >> ferrante: it did indeed. >> whitaker: the department of homeland security was so alarmed by what it saw the russians doing, it took the unprecedented step of arranging a conference call with election officials from all 50 states. the f.b.i. put out this flash alert. but the intelligence community wasn't prepared to publicly implicate russia, so the call and the alert simply warned states to be on the lookout for the kind of malicious attack that had hit illinois. did information from other states start flooding in? >> ferrante: i would show up to work every single day and learn of two, three, four more state