Germany: Russian Hackers Could Sabotage The 2017 German Elections | iTech Post

A group of state-sponsored Russian hackers could disrupt the Germany´s 2017 elections, as it was stated by the head of the country’s Federal Intelligence Service and president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Bruno Kahl. Apparently, the hackers could sabotage the political event and undermine the democratic process by several methods that include the spreading of misinformation, hacking government emails and execute cyber strikes to elicit political uncertainty. According to the International Business Times, the spy boss claimed that the Russian hackers are interested in discredit the democratic process as much as they can, no matter of who benefits the most. The reason why he ensured that the cyberattacks could come is because he already witnessed a targeted email spoofing campaigns that were developed by foreign hackers , who he admitted having received information that pointed out that they could possibly come from Russia, which wouldn’t be a surprise considering that that kind of criminal actions are tolerated or desired by the Kremlin.

Germany: Spy chief says Russian hackers could disrupt elections | The Guardian

The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service has warned that next year’s general election could be targeted by Russian hackers intent on spreading misinformation and undermining the democratic process. Bruno Kahl, president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, said Russia may have been behind attempts during the US presidential campaign to interfere with the vote. “We have evidence that cyber-attacks are taking place that have no purpose other than to elicit political uncertainty,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung in his first interview since he was appointed five months ago. “The perpetrators are interested in delegitimising the democratic process as such, regardless of who that ends up helping. We have indications that [the attacks] come from the Russian region.

National: Russia probably didn’t hack US election – but we still need audits, experts say | The Guardian

The computer science experts who want the presidential election results audited don’t think a Russian vote-hacking operation is likely, either. But they’ve been upset for a decade that there’s no way to make sure. Jeremy J Epstein, senior computer scientist at research center SRI International, said the effort to audit the vote “was and is a nationwide effort over a long period of time”. The Green party candidate, Jill Stein, has applied for a recount. The Clinton campaign has said it will cooperate. “The Stein folks have somewhat hijacked the message, but I’m not worried,” Epstein said. “In fact, the goal of an audit is to verify [emphasis his] that the result was as originally reported.” Epstein describes himself as “75% confident that Trump won, and 25% that either there was an error in counting or there was a hack”. “Any accusation that it’s partisan and of-the-moment is ignorant of the history,” Epstein told the Guardian. Epstein, formerly of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, is one of the country’s foremost experts on election security and last year successfully crusaded to get insecure WinVote voting machines decertified and removed in Virginia.

National: Cybersecurity experts write open letter calling U.S. hacking investigation | Mashable

A huge group of scholars is refusing to let the sophisticated hacks that marred the U.S. election be forgotten. Dozens of experts in cybersecurity, defense, elections and authoritarian regimes have signed an open letter calling on members of Congress to investigate reports of hacking by foreign powers in an effort to influence the outcome of the U.S. election. The letter called for a particular focus on Russia’s involvement. “In this case, what is right is simple: our country needs a thorough, public Congressional investigation into the role that foreign powers played in the months leading up to November,” the experts wrote. “As representatives of the American people, Congress is best positioned to conduct an objective investigation.”

Editorials: Why our entire election system is in jeopardy | Steve Weisman/USA Today

The presidential election is over, but the multiple threats to the trustworthiness of our election system and thus our entire democracy exposed during the recent, contentious presidential campaign must be addressed for democracy to survive. The threat is real and it is multifaceted. Disinformation was rampant throughout social media and even, in some instances, through more conventional media sources, such as the false reporting by Fox News Channel of the likelihood of an indictment of Hillary Clinton by the FBI on charges related to misconduct tied to the Clinton Foundation. Social media was a sewer of misinformation during the campaign. According to the Pew Research Center and Knight Foundation, more than 40% of people turn to social media for their news. Twitter was particularly active on Election Day. It is a simple thing for someone or some country trying to influence an election to set up phony Twitter accounts to sow deliberate misinformation. Fake stories, such as Pope Francis’ endorsement of Donald Trump and reports that Clinton adviser John Podesta was a Satanist, spread through phony news links on Facebook and other social media.

National: Russian hacking of election infrastructure ‘curtailed’ after US statement | The Hill

Russian scanning of state election infrastructure was “curtailed” after the U.S. publicly blamed Moscow for hacking several U.S. political organizations, the nation’s top intelligence official says. “The issuance of the statement and communication between our government and the Russian government seemed to have curtailed the cyber activity the Russians were previously engaged in,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday. “I was referring to cyber reconnaissance many states had observed prior to the statement,” Clapper clarified. Russia is believed to have been behind pre-election attempts to penetrate voter information databases in Arizona and Illinois. Clapper, together with the Department of Homeland Security, in October publicly blamed Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and other political organizations this year, calling the thefts an intentional effort to interfere with the U.S. election process. But intelligence leaders at the time said they were not ready to confirm that the probing of state election systems was the work on Russian hackers.

Editorials: A new era: our elections now will be decided by hackers and leaked data | Steven Hill/The Guardian

A new and disturbing factor emerged during this presidential election, and one that may change elections forever: democracies are now at the mercy of hacking and surveillance technology – and those who control it. WikiLeaks and a network of anonymous hackers have become a major influence, turning the rituals of democracy into sleaze-fests for the tabloids and the sensationalist press. And foreign governments have a hand, too – allegedly Russia, in the case of the US election. Technology has advanced rapidly from election to election, becoming more powerful and ubiquitous. Skilled hackers have the ability to access and release private conversations, communications and information, whether from two hours ago or 20 years ago. And now in the US, that technology has played the role of kingmaker: WikiLeaks’ firepower was directed only at one of the presidential candidates, and the topic of missing emails was controversially revived by the FBI nine days before the election. Hillary Clinton blamed that intervention as one reason she lost the election. Both set a troubling precedent, but this emerging “leakocracy” is not just a threat to the US.

Germany: Intelligence services ′alarmed′ about potential Russian interference in elections | Deutsche Welle

German intelligence agency chief Hans-Georg Maassen said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that he was worried about the potential extent of Russia’s influence on German voters. “Last year we saw that public opinion in Germany was influenced by the Russians,” Maassen said, who is the head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency. Asked if he saw this danger also for the pending federal election campaign, he replied: “This could also take place next year, and we’re alarmed.” During the interview, Maassen referred specifically to the case of the alleged abduction of Lisa, a Russian-born girl from Berlin. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly exhorted the German judiciary.

National: White House Confirms Pre-Election Warning to Russia Over Hacking | The New York Times

Over the past month, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has received two starkly different messages about hacking into American computer networks from the current and future presidents of the United States: Don’t you dare, and don’t worry, we’re not even sure it was you. The White House confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that eight days before the presidential election, the United States “contacted the Russian government directly regarding malicious cyberactivity” that was “targeting U.S. state election-related systems.” It sent the message over a rarely used system: a hotline connecting the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers in both countries, which they had agreed three years ago could also be employed to deal with major cyber incidents. The pre-election warning — only the latest after verbal cautions by President Obama, his defense secretary and the director of national intelligence — was reported by The Washington Post. The warnings to Russia against further hacking into polling or registration systems, or any further effort to affect the outcome of the election, are being hailed by the Obama administration as a success in deterrence. After all, they argue, a year and a half of Russian hacking activity seemed to slow, or halt, and there is no evidence that voting or counting of ballots was disrupted on Election Day.

National: NSA: WikiLeaks election leaks were ‘conscious effort by a nation-state’ | International Business Times

The leaks and disclosures published by WikiLeaks in the run-up to the US presidential election this year were a “conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect”, according to the director of the National Security Agency (NSA). US intelligence chief Michael Rogers, who has managed the secretive agency since 2014, said during a Wall Street Journal conference on 15 November that Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid was hampered by state-sponsored hackers who worked to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. “There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind – this was not something that was done casually,” he said when asked about WikiLeaks’ publications. “This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily.”

National: GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham wants Congress to investigate Russian cyberattack on DNC, election | Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump may seek improved relations with Russia, but top Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham wants Vladimir Putin held responsible if the Russian government was involved in cyber-hacks to disrupt the U.S. elections. Graham, who has sparred openly with Trump, his former rival in the presidential primary, is proposing that Congress hold a series of hearings on “Russia’s misadventures throughout the world” – including whether they were involved in “hacking into the DNC.” “Were they involved in cyberattacks that had a political component to it in our elections?” Graham said. If so, Graham said, “Putin should be punished.”

National: DHS Secretary: No election day cyberattacks | CyberScoop

Despite warnings during the that there might be attempts by Russian hackers to disrupt or even influence the outcome of U.S. elections, authorities on high alert across the country last week detected no major cyber attacks or untoward online activity directed at election infrastructure, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Monday. “In connection with the election, we did not see anything that I would characterize as significant,” he told the Bloomberg Next forum in D.C., “There were minor incidents of the type that people might expect, but nothing of significance.”

Editorials: Did Russia Install Donald Trump As the Next U.S. President? | Caroline Baylon/Newsweek

From Iran to Chile, covert CIA-backed operations were responsible for installing leaders friendly to the U.S. in countries around the world in an attempt to gain supremacy over the then-Soviet Union during the Cold War. Russia seems to have taken a page from the U.S. playbook and one upped it, as it may have significantly contributed to the election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. The U.S. intelligence community has publicly accused the Russian government of being behind the hacking and leaking of emails involving Hillary Clinton’s election campaign by cyber espionage groups Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear on WikiLeaks and other sites this summer. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, issued a joint statement with Department of Homeland Security on October 7 declaring that they were “confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails” and that “these thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has been vocal in his support of Trump, calling him the “absolute leader in the presidential race” in a December 2015 news conference. Many of Trump’s positions—including his expressions of admiration for Putin and his July 2016 comments that he “would be looking at” recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and lifting sanctions—have curried the favor of the Russian leader.

Australia: E-voting risks in Australia after Russian hacking in US election | Financial Review

The Turnbull government’s new Cyber Ambassador, Tobias Feakin, has warned of the risks of e-voting after allegations Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton’s emails may have influenced the US election outcome. The comments may further slow moves towards a change, after Labor turned on the idea in its submissions to a joint parliamentary inquiry into the federal election, saying the online census outage was cause to proceed with caution. In the days after the Australian federal election, both Malcolm Turnbull and Labor leader Bill Shorten called for the introduction of electronic voting, saying in 2016 it should not take more than eight days to find out a result. … E-voting expert University of Melbourne’s Vanessa Teague has previously said instead of at-home e-voting via personal devices, which could be unsafe, she would instead advocate a change to e-voting via computers at polling places.

France: After US election, Russia feared influencing French vote, corroding Western values | Sydney Morning Herald

Marine Le Pen, the far-right French leader hopeful of a strong showing in next year’s presidential election, has defended borrowing from a Russian bank to fund her party – and promised closer ties between the Elysee Palace and the Kremlin if she wins next May. There are growing fears of Russian interference in the vote, after Donald Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin and Russia’s alleged role in hacking the Democratic party’s email server were hot topics in the US election. Foreign policy experts told Fairfax that Russia would benefit from “chaos” in Europe and a weakened NATO and EU, and it was not clear how far it would go to exploit the opportunities offered by next year’s presidential elections in France. Ms Le Pen admitted in 2014 that her party borrowed 9 million euros ($12.9 million) from a Russian-owned bank. Russia has also reportedly lent money to Greece’s Golden Dawn, Italy’s Northern League, Hungary’s Jobbik and the Freedom Party of Austria.

National: US election: all quiet on the cyber front | Sydney Morning Herald

Despite concerns about possible attempts to hack or otherwise tamper with the US election, voting appears to have gone smoothly, with no attacks or intrusions. The Department of Homeland Security said it had no reports of election-related cyber breaches. … “All the discussions this year about security gave states another measure of protection,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a non-partisan, non-profit organisation that advocates for elections accuracy. That work also helped minimise the effects caused by breakdowns of voting machines or crashes of registration databases. In Smith’s experience, the resiliency of the voting system after something goes wrong is what keeps small problems small. For example in Colorado, the state’s electronic voter registration system went down for 29 minutes, from 2.47pm to 3.16pm local time, according to Secretary of State’s spokeswoman Lynn Bartels.

Editorials: American Elections Will Be Hacked | Bruce Schneier/The New York Times

It’s over. The voting went smoothly. As of the time of writing, there are no serious fraud allegations, nor credible evidence that anyone hacked the voting rolls or voting machines. And most important, the results are not in doubt. While we may breathe a collective sigh of relief about that, we can’t ignore the issue until the next election. The risks remain. As computer security experts have been saying for years, our newly computerized voting systems are vulnerable to attack by both individual hackers and government-sponsored cyberwarriors. It is only a matter of time before such an attack happens. Electronic voting machines can be hacked, and those machines that do not include a paper ballot that can verify each voter’s choice can be hacked undetectably. Voting rolls are also vulnerable; they are all computerized databases whose entries can be deleted or changed to sow chaos on Election Day.

Germany: Merkel warns of Russian cyber attacks in German elections | Deutsche Welle

Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Tuesday that Russia could try to influence next year’s German national elections through cyber warfare and disinformation, an assertion that comes after Washington blamed Moscow for interfering in the US election. Merkel told a conference that Germany already faced “a daily task” of responding to Russian cyber attacks and a disinformation campaign. “We are already, even now, having to deal with information out of Russia or with internet attacks that are of Russian origin or with news which sows false information,” Merkel said alongside her Norwegian counterpart Erna Solberg.

National: Russian hackers accused of post-election attacks on U.S. think tanks | Reuters

A Russian hacking group began attacking U.S.-based policy think tanks within hours of Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, according to cyber experts who suspect Moscow is seeking information on the incoming administration. Three cyber security firms told Reuters that are tracking a spear-phishing campaign by a Russian-government linked group known as Cozy Bear, which is widely suspected of hacking the Democratic Party ahead of the election. “Probably now they are trying to rush to gain access to certain targets where they can get a better understanding on what is going on in Washington after the election and during the transition period,” said Jaime Blasco, chief scientist with cyber security firm AlienVault. Targets included the Council for Foreign Relations, said Adam Segal, a security expert with the think tank. His colleagues include former U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV and former Reagan administration State Department official Elliott Abrams.

National: Hack the vote: Did a 4chan attack help rig the election for Trump? | Salon

Although Donald Trump liked to claim the election was rigged against him, an anonymous hacker on 4chan may have literally helped rig the election against Hillary Clinton. On Sunday night, a post 4chan’s /pol/ board declared that it would perform a denial-of-service attack on any tools used by the Clinton campaign using a Mirai botnet code. This was not the first time 4chan had intervened in the campaign to help Trump and hurt Clinton, most notably in October when a 4channer used the password to John Podesta’s iPhone (as published by WikiLeaks) to locate and remotely wipe the device. “List targets here that if taken out could harm Clinton’s chances of winning and I will pounce on them like a wild animal,” the post, written by someone dubbed Sparky, proclaimed. “Not sleeping until after this election is over.”

National: Fears of hacked election ebb in quiet, watchful night | USA Today

Despite concerns about possible attempts to hack or otherwise tamper with the U.S. election, voting appears to have gone smoothly, with no attacks or intrusions. The Department of Homeland Security said it had no reports of election-related cyber breaches. … “All the discussions this year about security gave states another measure of protection,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that advocates for elections accuracy. That work also helped minimize the effects caused by breakdowns of voting machines or crashes of registration databases. In Smith’s experience, the resiliency of the voting system after something goes wrong is what keeps small problems small. For example in Colorado, the state’s electronic voter registration system went down for 29 minutes, from 2:47 p.m. to 3:16 p.m. local time, according to Secretary of State’s spokeswoman Lynn Bartels. Voting continued during the outage, though while the registration system was out, clerks were not be able to process mail-in ballots and in-person voters had to use provisional ballots. Once the system was back up and running normal voting resumed. “It’s very possible that things like what happened in Colorado could have been worse had there not been this emphasis on checking these systems. Instead of it being 29 minutes it could have been much longer,” Verified Voting’s Smith said.

National: US election: Experts keep watch over ‘hack states’ | BBC

The concern that the 2016 US presidential election may be hacked, by Russia or some other bad actor, could hold the same place in history as the Millennium Bug: a whole load of worry over nothing. “Unless the election is extraordinarily close, it is unlikely that an attack will result in the wrong candidate getting elected,” suggest Matt Bernhard and Professor J Alex Halderman, security experts from the University of Michigan. But they say the risk the election process could be disrupted by hackers should be taken extremely seriously. In the run up to the big day, the US Department of Homeland Security has been carrying out “cyber hygiene” tests on voting systems across the country. Officials are confident in the technology, but there are weaknesses that have security professionals standing-by on election day ready to step-in if irregularities are spotted.

National: Here’s how hackers can wreak havoc on Election Day | Recode

Whatever the outcome Tuesday, there’s one thing that could very well happen: Accusations that the election has been rigged and the results falsified. This is extremely unlikely — voter fraud is more rare than being struck by lightning, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. But the 2016 presidential race has been riddled with leaks perpetrated by hackers who wormed their way into servers to try to undermine the election. And though there’s little precedent, the truth is that interference by hackers tomorrow is totally possible. That doesn’t mean hackers are necessarily able to alter the election results, but they could sow fear and mayhem that lead to claims of rigging after Election Day. Here’s how. “Most voting systems are not designed to be connected to the internet for their operation, and because of that there’s no easy remote way in,” said Pamela Smith of VerifiedVoting.org, a nonpartisan group that promotes accuracy and transparency at the polls. Officials like to point out that this is a security feature. But, Smith says, that doesn’t rule out concern for an insider threat.

National: Vulnerable Voting Machines Yet Another IoT Device to Secure | eSecurity Planet

This election season, voting machine security is probably not top of mind. After all, 75 percent of votes cast in the United States use paper ballots, and many electronic machines print a ballot to maintain a paper trail. However, according to Pamela Smith, president of election integrity organization Verified Voting, Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, New Jersey and South Carolina use electronic voting machines. If connected to a network, a voting machine could be yet another device that needs to be secured. For instance, hackers could likely intercept signals from an electronic voting machine connected to the network, similar to how hackers could intercept a user’s data when he or she connects to public Wi-Fi. Earlier this year, the FBI issued an alert requesting that states contact their Board of Elections and determine if any suspicious activity had been detected in their logs, following the hacking of two state election boards, one of which resulted in data being stolen. This led to ongoing speculation as to whether tomorrow’s election will be hacked.

National: US Election Systems Seen ‘Painfully Vulnerable’ to Cyberattack | VoA News

In the waning days of his campaign to win the White House, Donald Trump has been warning his supporters that the presidential vote is being “rigged” against the Republicans and in favor of rival Hillary Clinton, a Democrat. … Trump campaign officials have been quick to clarify that when Trump talks about “rigging,” he’s usually referring to what he sees as media bias against his candidacy. But all the talk of election irregularities has elevated concerns among some Americans about the security of their votes — and perhaps in one regard, with good reason. … Elections in the U.S. are run individually by the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Secretaries of state, both Republicans and Democrats, insist their systems are secure. That message was recently echoed by Thomas Hicks, chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, who told members of the U.S. House of Representatives, “There’s no national system that a hacker or a bad actor can infiltrate to affect the American elections as a whole.” Hicks’ views are not shared among many cyber researchers. “I’m pretty worried,” said J. Alex Halderman, director of the Center for Computer Security and Society at the University of Michigan. “We’re facing some pretty serious threats when it comes to security and elections. I’m quite worried that in an election soon we’ll see real attacks that will either try to disrupt the election or possibly would try to change votes.”

National: Your Government Isn’t That Worried About An Election Day Cyberattack | WIRED

Over the past few months, an escalating series of attacks on computer networks—many of them inflicted by something called the Mirai botnet, which uses a web of infected DVRs, webcams, and other “smart” devices to drown targeted websites in traffic—have wrought unprecedented havoc all over the world. Experts have speculated that these distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks are a “rehearsal” for something bigger. Meanwhile Russian hackers have been busy throwing monkey wrenches into the American presidential election, breaking into the computers of the Democratic National Committee this summer and (it seems) leaking emails from John Podesta, a high-level aide to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The confluence of these two threats—a super-powerful botnet and the specter of Russian influence on the contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump—has stoked fears of a massive cyberattack that could upend the vote on November 8. So, yes, the government and the cybersecurity industry are on high alert. “A lot of actors will try to take advantage of a high-profile event to cause trouble or raise their profiles,” says Ian Gray, a cyber intelligence analyst for Flashpoint, which has been at the center of monitoring and mitigating attacks by Mirai. But intelligence does not point to a connection between the autumn spree of DDOS attacks and a state-sponsored effort to hack the election itself. And government officials say they don’t believe an attack is likely to black out some massive chunk of the internet in order to wreak political havoc on Tuesday.

National: Cyberattacks on Election Day Might Not Happen, But If They Do They’ll be Denials of Service and Disinformation | WIRED

Hacks, sata leaks, and disinformation have all added to the chaos of one of the most contentious elections in history. US intelligence agencies have even accused Russia of perpetrating some portion of the digital meddling. And now reports indicate that officials are preparing for worst-case cybersecurity scenarios on November 8. But what might those election day digital threats realistically look like? Government officials and the media have been worried over the possibilities of attacks that might hack voting machines, leak last-minute November surprises about candidates, or even sabotage the power grid. But ask the cybersecurity community, and they’ll tell you the easiest way to hack the election is a simpler, two-pronged attack: Black out sources of real information and spread disinformation. “They’re going to try to influence this election further using a combination of things like additional leaks, DDoS attacks, and targeting the media,” says Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence at the security firm CrowdStrike. “What better way to destabilize a country without a shot being fired than by leveraging these various tools to play with people?”

National: Under the Din of the Presidential Race Lies a Once and Future Threat: Cyberwarfare | The New York Times

The 2016 presidential race will be remembered for many ugly moments, but the most lasting historical marker may be one that neither voters nor American intelligence agencies saw coming: It is the first time that a foreign power has unleashed cyberweapons to disrupt, or perhaps influence, a United States election. And there is a foreboding sense that, in elections to come, there is no turning back. The steady drumbeat of allegations of Russian troublemaking — leaks from stolen emails and probes of election-system defenses — has continued through the campaign’s last days. These intrusions, current and former administration officials agree, will embolden other American adversaries, which have been given a vivid demonstration that, when used with some subtlety, their growing digital arsenals can be particularly damaging in the frenzy of a democratic election.

National: Cyber ‘SWAT’ teams gird for Election Day trouble | USA Today

Law enforcement officials, government workers and cyber-security professionals are preparing to swoop in, track and hopefully block anyone attempting a cyberattack aimed at destabilizing the U.S. presidential election. The possibility is slight, with risks lessened by the fractured, pre-digital nature of the national voting apparatus. Still, fears that hackers — perhaps from Russia — could instill doubts about the voting process via attacks on the Internet infrastructure have put the cyber-security community on guard. In a way, they are girding for war, but the fronts are multiple and decentralized. Although many are keeping low profiles, we know about some.

National: Could Russia Hack Presidential Election 2016? | iTech Post

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.