After the 2016 presidential elections were found to be affected by Russian hacking and misinformation campaigns, efforts are being made ahead of the November midterms to prevent such attacks.
More than half of voters are concerned about their personal data following the 2016 elections, but more than 30% have not adjusted security habits following those hacks, a survey from Pleasanton, Calif.-based security protocol provider OpenVPN concluded. It found 60% of people do not believe the U.S. voting system is secure and 63% think the U.S. has not done enough to protect the voting system for future elections. Meanwhile, widely-used U.S. election systems have been found to be vulnerable to attack.
“Of course, the responsibility is on the government to protect these systems and use good security measures,” said Francis Dinha, chief executive officer of OpenVPN. “But it is also in the consumer’s best interest to pick up some of the slack and protect their own data.”
Voting security can be compromised
The machines that count our votes are vulnerable to hacks, security researchers have found. It took less than two hours for hackers to break into voting machines used in many U.S. states in a hackathon at the annual DefCon cybersecurity conference in 2017. Some machines were hacked in just 35 minutes.
In September 2018, hackers from DefCon delivered a report to politicians on Capitol Hill based on research showing that election machines in more than half of U.S. states can be compromised.
ES&S, the Nebraska-based company that makes the machines, said the company’s machines are sufficiently secure. “The security protections on the M650 are strong enough to make it extraordinarily difficult to hack in a real world environment,” a spokeswoman previously said.
Voter registration databases are widely available
When people think about an election being hacked, they generally envision large-scale attacks on ballot counting machines. But the more concerning form of vote manipulation comes in the form of targeted misinformation campaigns, said Robert McNutt, vice president of emerging technologies at San Jose, Calif.-based cybersecurity company ForeScout.
Voter registration data, including your name and party affiliation, are widely available upon request in many states. Hackers are also increasingly selling voter database information on the dark web, according to McNutt. That means people who want to manipulate elections can more easily target voters based on their existing views.
“We need to bolster the hygiene of the people that control the voting,” McNutt said. “Counties can sway entire votes for states, so if you access that information and target a certain set of people, that is a way to sway elections on a grander scale.”
Misinformation campaigns abound
The 2016 Presidential election showed how big an effect misinformation campaigns can have and, critics have alleged, even played a part in deciding the presidency for Donald Trump.
Facebook has admitted it found Russian operatives attempted to influence the U.S. election in Trump’s favor using fake accounts. Misinformation is the most common form of election tampering, said Nimit Sawhney, chief executive officer at Voatz, a Boston-based mobile-focused election company.
This may involve emails sending voters false information to direct them to the wrong polling centers, telling unsuspecting voters that long wait lines will make voting impossible before the polling station closes, or making untrue reports of violence at polling stations.
Next month, voters should check their polling locations using official government websites and always verify reports on the day of the vote. “Don’t wait until the last minute,” Sawhney said. “If there is a glitch or change, it may take time to clear up. Some people don’t take time off work and go to the polls at the last minute. Make sure you know where you are going ahead of time.”
Fake news allegations
In addition to false information about where to vote, some bad actors are spreading false information online in hopes of swaying votes. Facebook FB, -0.56% and Twitter TWTR, -1.57% said they are cracking down on so-called “fake news” as the elections near.
Facebook has already removed hundreds of accounts it said were spreading false information and banned false information on the site, including untrue reports about polling sites. These false reports can have long-lasting effects: false news stories are 70% more likely to be retweeted than true ones. Perhaps more chilling: The spread of fake news has been so successful that real news has lost a lot of its power, said McNutt.
“People don’t believe anything they read or see anywhere, even if it’s from a notable news source,” he said. “The answer is now, ‘I believe what I want to believe.’”
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