Securing the Elections is Probably Not What You Think it’s
eWEEK PERSPECTIVE: Election safety for the 2020 Presidential elections is an even bigger drawback than most voters understand, however the challenges usually are not essentially about precise votes.
When I discuss with potential voters about election safety, the most typical concern is that somebody, most likely the Russians, will hack their native election board and alter votes. That’s truly an unlikely situation. While a international energy most likely may hack the voting information in your metropolis or county, they’re not going to do it.
The cause that native voter information is unlikely to be hacked is that it’s merely an excessive amount of work. They’d need to hack into plenty of counties, and that takes plenty of workers hours. Worse, they’d haven’t any strategy to know upfront whether or not the voters they had been hacking can be ones that will make a distinction. Plus, altering too many votes can be observed.
What truly occurs in native elections is that unhealthy actors, international or home, do their greatest to discourage individuals from voting, or they work to forged doubt on the accuracy of the outcomes. There are a variety of ways in which these unhealthy actors attempt to stop voting, together with offering data that makes an attempt to confuse voters on election day, or they attempt to persuade voters that the data they’ve concerning the election is fallacious.
Disruption of elections is completed in roundabout methods
There’s additionally a subset of such voters that attempt to begin harmful memes to forged doubt on the method or attempt to persuade voters that their candidate has had one thing unhealthy occur. Other assaults is probably not supposed to forged doubts on the integrity of the election methods however can nonetheless accomplish that.
An instance is Hall County, Ga., which was hit with a ransomware assault in early October 2020. While that assault didn’t stop voting, it did stop entry to a database that allowed election officers within the county to test signatures on absentee ballots. The county was nonetheless in a position to course of these ballots by utilizing a state database, and whereas it affected different administrative features, it didn’t stop voting.
“I think the Georgia county was a good case,” stated Marcus Fowler, director of strategic threats at Darktrace. Fowler stated that such assaults can damage confidence within the election system.
“These can influence voters’ choice not to vote, they can impede voting and undermine the credibility of the results,” Fowler stated. “These cyber actions can erode credibility, and provide a way for candidates to call into question the result if it’s not in their favor.”
Transparency from election officers is necessary
Fowler stated that he needs that Hall County had been extra clear about what occurred. “The quicker they can be transparent, the easier they can maintain credibility. You’re feeding the disinformation trolls if you’re not transparent,” Fowler stated.
“The extra cyber occasions, the extra avenues of…
