Mueller findings raise election hacking fears in states — GCN

Mueller findings raise election hacking fears in states

• By Matt Vasilogambros
• May 02, 2019

Tucked into the 448-page report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller were four paragraphs about major breaches into state and local election systems.

Mueller’s description of Russian interference designed to help the Trump campaign was a reminder of how far many state and local officials have come in securing election infrastructure, but also of how stark the threat remains to the nation’s 8,000 election offices.

The report even disclosed a previously unknown breach: Russian intelligence agents in November 2016 tried to introduce corrupted files into election offices in several Florida counties. The hackers succeeded in at least one of those counties, the report indicates.

It raises questions about election systems’ vulnerability to outside hackers -- and why the FBI didn’t tell Florida officials about the attempted strike.

Election security experts say malicious foreign actors continue this year to target voter registration databases, Election Day result programs, and election office websites and social media profiles as they did during the last presidential election.

“It once again reinforces that this is a legitimate threat,” said Maurice Turner, a senior technologist at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. “This isn’t just a one-time issue that’s come and gone.”

Any interference operations targeting the 2020 presidential election already have begun, Turner said. Phishing emails designed to allow hackers to capture passwords, usernames or personal information through unwitting officials likely have already gone out, he said.

Top U.S. intelligence officials also are warning that Russia is trying to interfere with and influence U.S. elections once again. At a recent event at the Council on Foreign Relations, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Russia poses a “very significant counterintelligence threat” to the United States.

“We recognize that our adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping their game,” Wray said. “So, we’re very much viewing 2018 as just kind of a dress rehearsal for the big show in 2020.”

The FBI did not respond to a request from Stateline for comment.

States are trying to boost their 2020 readiness. The Virginia Department of Elections, for example, hosted its first large-scale election security exercise in April, bringing in more than a hundred local officials from across the commonwealth to go over best practices and simulate scenarios, such as Election Day social media misinformation and attempted hackings.

Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the democracy program at the New York University Law School School’s Brennan Center for Justice, said in an interview with Stateline that there are still several glaring holes in U.S. election security.

In 12 states, some counties still use paperless voting machines, and in four states every county does, according to a March report from Brennan. Without a paper record, officials cannot guarantee the accuracy of vote tallies, and systems are vulnerable to hacking, Norden said.

“There have been a lot of changes since 2016,” Norden said, “but it’s hard not to feel frustrated that we haven’t done more.”

Six states with some jurisdictions that still use paperless machines -- Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas -- indicated to Brennan that they don’t have the money to replace their voting machines, a common problem for election officials. This may leave them at risk of malfunctions, long lines and potential security issues.

Preserving the public’s trust in an election system that Russians hacked remains a challenge for local election officials in Illinois, one of the states with documented breaches.

Tazewell County Clerk John Ackerman, serving 91,000 voters south of Peoria, said interference during the 2016 presidential election stoked fear among residents that their votes might not be tallied accurately.

“While we’re diligent in making sure our system is secure, we also have to instill confidence in the system among the voting public that we’re not asleep at the wheel,” Ackerman said. “Russia wanted us to feel our system is broken. That’s not the case. It’s strong.”

In addition to working closely with the state to monitor the security of its election systems, the county uses an optical-scan voting machine with a paper record to audit results and prevent tampering, Ackerman said.

Comments are closed.