Hacking is a cyber crime.
Hackers are those who track down a system belonging to another and gains unauthorized access to others device. At first, it was only our PC that was under cyber threats; then it goes for smartphones and every other device that can be connected to the web. If you are not sure about using your devices in a proper and safe way, learn about the internet security tips! Every year, many companies and personal data are getting trapped and snatched by cyber criminals through their cyber attacks. Nowadays, even voting machines are not out of the range of cyber attacks. In recent news, we have heard a lot about election voting machine hacking.
How Much Vulnerable the Voting Machines Are?
Is Voting Machine Hacking Really Easy?
Voting machine hacking. How is that even possible?
Somehow it is possible, and that’s why everyone around the world should worry about it. As we already know that, the recent U.S election topic has become the biggest talk of the world media. Wherever you go, no matter which country you are in, you see at least few people talking about the upcoming U.S election. Especially, two names are going viral, and we know both of them very well. One eligible candidate is a successful businessman, and one of the richest guys in America, Mr. Donald Trump and another one is already from a family where her husband Bill Clinton was one of the most successful presidents in the history of the United States. Yes, we are talking about Hillary Clinton.
This year, 8th November, these two political giants are going toe to toe in Presidential Election. Many assumptions, speculations, predictions are roaming around the zero air. President election debate is going well and creating a whole new level of excitement. Sometimes, these two candidates are going very friendly on each other and sometimes firing each other by words and blame game. Rumors are running that, voting machines can be hacked by hackers very easily.
Well, if that happens, the election result can amaze us all. Even Mr. Trump himself speculated that this election would be a “rigged” election. Russia will be playing a very active role in this election more or less. Authorities are getting aware of outdated and insecure electronic voting machine’s security breach. They are claiming that these voting machines can be hacked easily that can change the fate and future of the United States of America. It may have some bad or good effect on world economy or even politics.
What Expertise Says
U.S Presidential election is less than a month away from now. As I have mentioned that Russia is going to play an active role somehow by occurring something unexpected thing. Everybody knows the current cyberwar between Russia and United States. Recently the voting machines security issues came out wide open. Brennan Center for Justice confirmed the report last September.
We still can remember the fiasco on vote-counting back in 2000 Presidential election where Bush and Al Gore were the candidates. The thing many of us will not remember that there was the punch-card voting system that has the large circle of vulnerabilities. Later time, punch card voting system were replaced with the electronic voting machine and Help America Vote Act(HAVA) passed it IN 2002 successfully. However, It didn’t do any good so far as new voting machines were vulnerable too.
Experts had their opinion regarding the newly added system. According to Lawrence Norden,
“Moving to electronic voting systems solved a lot of problems, but created a lot of new ones.”
Lawrence also quoted, “People weren’t thinking about voting system security or all the additional challenges that come with electronic voting systems.”
He specified that computer which is decade older or so could be easily reachable by hackers and dangerously vulnerable. Cyber criminals can send malware that can quickly penetrate the security system of those computers. Just because those are not latest device.
Norden also says, “When people think about doing something major to impact our election results at the voting machine, they believe that they’d try to switch results, but you can do a lot less than that and do a lot of damage. If you have machines not working, or working slowly, that could create lots of problems too, preventing people from voting at all.”
Hacking Test
Back in 2012, White Hat Hacker, Roger Johnson explained the easiness and possibilities of voting machine hacking. Experts are saying, it will not take more than 7 to 8 minutes to hack voting machines. Andrew Appel, Professor from Princeton University and Alex Halderman, a grad student from the same university, did the test. They took only 7 minutes to hack a voting machine.
On a recent report, Institute for Critical Infrastructure claimed that the new voting machines are vulnerable and very easy to get in.
However, it’s way easier to hack all the voting computers. Hacking elections is hard. Because it requires physical presence for election rigging. Why did I say it’s difficult to do it? Well, physical access will increase the risk of detection and police arrest. Because hacker needs to get into every machine without making a noise. What can you do to increase a chance of something like that to happen? You can always follow the recommended cyber security tips!
Final Words
So far we talked about voting machines and voting machine hacking.Now it’s time to wait. U.S Presidential election is less than a month away from now. It is going to be very exciting and. Let’s see whether Trump’s prediction turns out to be true or not. U.S presidential election is going to have an effect the entire world economy and politics. It’s just a matter of time, and we are going to see a new president in the white house. Let’s hope for the best.