Election officials criticize Harvard study of voter registration vulnerabilities

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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