Cybersecurity researchers are raising the specter of a Russian cyber attack on Election Day and many voters are concerned that the presidential election could be hacked after Russia’s recent hack of the Democratic National Committee. American voters are concerned that the presidential election could become the target of hackers and the outcome could be manipulated. In this troubled context, GOP candidate Donald Trump has also added to the general anxiety by casting doubt on the legitimacy of the presidential election to be cast on Tuesday, Nov. 8. Trump suggested that in case if he loses, he might not accept the results. But is it really possible to hack the election? How really vulnerable is the U.S. presidential election to an eventual Russian hacking? … Pamela Smith, president of the non-partisan lobbying group Verified Voting, explained for the same publication that the U.S. doesn’t have a national voting system but rather local jurisdiction-specific voting systems. On the international scene, there were indeed some elections that have been tampered with over the internet, but that could happen only where there’s been a national election system. That’s not the case of the U.S.
However, individual local results could still fall victim to tampering. Andrew Appel, a Princeton professor and member of Verified Voting’s board of advisors, has declared that hacking electronic voting machines is very easy. In fact, not only the voting machines themselves can be hacked but also the desktop and laptop computers that are used by the election officials to prepare voter registration, electronic poll books, the ballots and the electronic files from the OpScan machines.
In an interview with Politico Magazine, Appel said that the election would be significantly disrupted in case that any of these systems get hacked. Some even wondered if last month’s massive DDoS attack may be a mere rehearsal for a destructive Election Day attack. A likely scenario is a voting machine error leading to an incorrect result.
Full Article: Could Russia Hack Presidential Election 2016? : Tech : iTech Post.