Security experts have detected hacking attempts on the US mid-term elections for first time, after Microsoft announced that it identified and blocked attempted attacks on three congressional candidates so far this year.  

Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president of security and trust, revealed the news at the Aspen Security Summit, Politicoreports. The company has not disclosed whether or not the Russian government is suspected of being behind the attacks, and did not specify who the targets were.​  

Burt did note, however, that they were all candidates for this year's mid-term elections, and were "people who, because of their positions, might have been interesting targets from an espionage standpoint as well as an election disruption standpoint".