This is kind of a related post but I’ve been very interested in the ways hackers can interfere in an election, so I’m going to write about it from another angle. Security experts were very optimistic about this year’s voting systems’ integrity. When asked why, an expert from IBM explained that Russian interference in the 2016 elections were actually not very technically sophisticated, but consisted of spear phishing, which we have covered in class. Spear Phishing involves sending an email from what appears to be a trusted sender in order to induce the victim to respond with highly confidential information. This actually has nothing to do with hacking a voting machine. Thus, perceivably, the solution to this spear phishing actually doesn’t involve these machines, but improved employee training, so that people don’t fall for these kinds of attacks in the future.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/midterm-election-hacking-cybersecurity-experts-think-we-should-trust-results/
This has been a curiosity of mine as well. I wish the story went into more of how or who they spearfished and how that could change votes. I suppose the damage is already done. People are starting to loose faith in the election system. That could cause a social snowball effect.