Category Archives: election hacking

Election officials criticize Harvard study of voter registration vulnerabilities

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Election officials are pushing back against a new Harvard study saying hackers could disenfranchise Americans in 35 states and the District of Columbia by exploiting vulnerabilities in online voter registration systems. The study published Wednesday in the journal Technology Science says hackers could buy — either from commercial data brokers or more cheaply from cybercriminals — all the personal data they need about millions of Americans to fraudulently alter voter registration records online. Calling it “voter identity theft,” journal Editor-in-Chief Latanya Sweeney, who is also a Harvard professor, and co-authors Ji Su Yoo and Jinyan Zang say a broad scale attack on several states could be carried out with data costing just a few thousand dollars. But state elections officials told CyberScoop the report was overblown. “The study doesn’t reflect the safeguards that the states have in place to guard against this sort of thing,” said Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, this year’s president of the National […]

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Hackers Take Over US Voting Machines In Just 90 Minutes

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Image Credit: @tjhorner

Today, election hacking is not just about hacking voting machines, rather it now also includes hacking and leaking dirty secrets of the targeted political parties—and there won’t be a perfect example than the last year’s US presidential election.

But, in countries like America, even hacking electronic voting machines is possible—that too, in a matter of minutes.

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Cybersecurity doubts may spook voters in future elections

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A new poll says growing concerns over cybersecurity could lead to millions of Americans staying home during the 2018 midterm elections and the subsequent 2020 presidential election. More than one in four American voters will consider not voting in upcoming elections due to concerns over cybersecurity, according to a new poll published Wednesday by the U.S. cybersecurity firm Carbon Black. That’s a jump of nearly ten percentage points from last year’s poll. The doubts are sharpest when it comes to the ability of state and local election authorities to defend against a cyberattack. Less than half of voters (45 percent) trust local authorities on cybersecurity, a number reflecting last month’s report that “election-related systems in 21 states that were targeted” by Russian hackers during the 2016 presidential election. Yet, less than half (47 percent) of American voters believed the 2016 election was influenced by foreign entities. That’s a sharp break with the U.S. intelligence community, but is […]

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Russia and U.S. to create ‘working group’ to discuss election hacking

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Russia and the United States will create a bilateral working group to discuss the issue of election hacking, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks held between the two nations’ presidents in Hamburg, Germany, during the G20 meetings. Earlier during G20 events, President Donald Trump declined to say he believed Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S. elections despite conclusions drawn by several U.S. intelligence agencies including the NSA, CIA and FBI. On Friday, Lavrov said Trump accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement that Russia did not meddle in U.S. elections. Immediately afterwards, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump and Putin agreed to work toward an agreement on non-interference in the politics of foreign nations. Trump and Putin see no value in “religitating the past,” Tillerson said, and will instead focus on the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. That puts into doubt the idea that this working group will look at the […]

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Top Democrat wants ‘full scope’ of foreign hacking against election systems publicly disclosed

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Mark Warner, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, wants the Department of Homeland Security to publicly disclose “the full scope” of foreign hacking of state and local election systems, the Virginian wrote in a letter today to DHS Secretary John Kelly. The Intelligence panel will hold an open hearing Wednesday on Russian hacking against U.S. targets. Experts from the DHS, FBI, Illinois State Board of Elections, the National Association of State Election Directors and election cybersecurity expert J. Alex Halderman will testify. “While I am not aware of evidence that the 2016 voting process itself was subjected to manipulation, and have no reason to doubt the validity of the election results, we know that the DHS and FBI have confirmed two intrusions into voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois by foreign-based hackers, though no data was modified or deleted.” Warner wrote in a letter to Kelly. “At the same time, there was suspicious activity aimed […]

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Database of Over 198 Million U.S. Voters Left Exposed On Unsecured Server

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Information on more than 198 Million United States citizens, that’s over 60% of the US population, was exposed in what’s believed to be the largest ever known exposure of voter-related to date.

This blunder was caused by Deep Root Analytics (DRA), a d… Continue reading Database of Over 198 Million U.S. Voters Left Exposed On Unsecured Server→

U.S. election software companies aren’t that worried about phishing emails

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Although a recently leaked intelligence report suggested that Russian spies attempted to hack into at least one election software vendor, many of the industry’s top companies say they aren’t threatened by spear phishing emails. Prominent election software companies say that phishing emails do not present a pressing problem, even though a classified intelligence report recently published by The Intercept indicated that Russian military intelligence had previously targeted one such company. The report says Russia’s attempt to influence the U.S. voting process may have been more expansive, and revealed attempts to place malware on the computers of local government officials. Of 16 U.S. election software companies contacted by CyberScoop, four said that they had not received any phishing emails between August 2016 and June 2017, including Free & Fair, ClearBallot, Scytl and BPro Inc. Others, like Everyone Counts, reported receiving phishing emails but stressed the sufficiency of the security systems currently in place […]

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After 2016 election hacking, Illinois politicians pose cybersecurity questions to local officials

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Nearly a year after Illinois election boards were targeted in a monthlong cyberattack, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and state Sen. Michael E. Hastings want the state’s local election authorities to assess the state’s election-system cybersecurity. The two Democrats are asking questions about what might have been hacked and how local election officials responded. The letter not only dives into the specifics of Illinois cybersecurity but also asks how federal and state agencies can assist in protecting the election system at all levels. The inquiry comes as the the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold an open hearing June 21 to examine U.S. election security for the 2018 and 2020 elections and to assess Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Experts from the DHS, FBI, Illinois State Board of Elections, the National Association of State Election Directors and election cybersecurity expert J. Alex Halderman will testify. Last year, the personal information of as many as 90,000 voters […]

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Russia poses largest cybersecurity risk to U.S., Rep. Ruppersberger says

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Although all of America’s adversaries present serious cyberthreats, Russia’s hackers are the most dangerous right now, says the Maryland congressman whose district houses the National Security Agency. “Cyber issues [are] so important to what we do. And what’s kind of keeping me up a little bit right now, it’s not China,” Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersburger said at the 2017 Digital Nation Summit presented by SAP and FedScoop. “I mean, we have to always look at China, and you have to look at Iran, you have to look at North Korea … but I think right now, where we have to focus especially in this field, is Russia.” Russian President Vladimir Putin is shrewd, smart and motivated to reunite the Soviet Union, and he’s pouring the country’s funds into cybersecurity, military and space, said Ruppersberger, who has served on several key committees during his long tenure in Congress, including the House Intelligence panel. His suburban Baltimore […]

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