A congressional subcommittee on information technology gathered on Wednesday, inviting high-ranking officials from the Department of Homeland Security and the US Election Assistance Commission, as well as cybersecurity experts to testify on how hackers could hijack the 2016 presidential elections. All five witnesses agreed that a cyberattack would not affect the outcome of the presidential election this November. The electronic voting system’s best line of defense against cyberattacks is that the machines aren’t connected to the internet, meaning hackers would have to show up in person to hijack the election.
… In 2015, up to 42 states used voting machines that were more than a decade old. The outdated technology in these machines is vulnerable, but hackers would have to literally unscrew machines in order to install malicious hardware. Doing this undetected at multiple polling sites would be difficult.
Dr. Andrew Appel, a Princeton University professor, demonstrated how to hack voting machines in New Jersey in 2009. In his testimony to Congress today, he pushed for all 50 states to abandon touchscreen voting machines and to bring back paper ballots.
Full Article: How to thwart Election Day hackers: Vote the old-fashioned way – CNET.