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| US Cyber Pros: Hackers Could Hit Electronic Voting Machines Next |
When the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks published
leaked emails of the U.S. Democratic National Committee last month,
it caused major embarrassment to the party,
that it’s shared U.S. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to quit.
That outcome shows
foreign hackers can achieve political goals
and incentivizes them to escalate their attacks,
as cyber security analyst Richard Forno told Hashtag VOA via Skype.
"Interfering with the electoral process and political process of countries
is sort of a classic tool
of intelligence and foreign policy.
So this really reinforces the fact that -
even though moving towards an era of electronic voting
and technology-enabled voting
everywhere, or in more and more places -
that the traditional threats are still with us,
and are now moving further, further into cyberspace."
Electronic voting machines are part of that cyberspace.
The vast majority of U.S. states will use them
for this November's national elections.
But a 2015 study by New York University found that
43 of those states have machines
that are at least a decade old.
Could they be hacked as well?
Cyber security pros
attending their annual Black Hat conference in Las Vegas
think so.
One of them, Toni Gidwani said via Skype
that there is a precedent for such attacks.
"Three days before the election,
the Ukrainian central election committee suffered a massive hack
that threatened their ability
to, you know, have voting happen on schedule.
And then malware was discovered
right before the results were announced
that projected a totally different outcome."
Some U.S. voting machines produce paper records
that can be used
in case of problems with the vote counts.
But keeping a paper trail might not be enough.
Cyber security analysts say
organizations seeking to protect their infrastructure from hackers
need all personnel to be cautious
in their online behavior.
Michael Lipin, VOA News, Washington |
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