5 ways election interference could (and probably will) worsen in 2018 and beyond - 32 touch screen

If you think 2016 is bad, wait for the sequel.
Two years ago, Russian election intervention penetrated almost every aspect of the political landscape, but many experts wondered whether the United States would act in future elections? S.
The election could be worse.
J. said: "If we do nothing and if we let the voting mechanism continue to deteriorate, then I am 100% sure that we will be attacked again in sufficient time . "
Alex Halderman, professor of computer science at the University of Michigan.
"In contrast, this will make the 2016 look quaint. "Forty-
Halderman said three states used computer voting machines for at least 10 years in 2016.
Cyber attacks or other activities in Russia have been discovered in at least 21 different states, often considered hackers are detecting loopholes that may be used more later.
The worst possible scenario this year or 2020 may make this look like a picnic.
The actual details of the American vote are fragile for many reasons.
Old computerized voting machines run old software, which makes it easier for them to expose potential bugs.
In many states that use full or partial digital voting systems, hacking has matured.
"I'm sitting in the office at my desk, a touchscreen computer voting machine that is still being used in several states that my research team invaded ten years ago, with the aim of making silent votes --
"Sneak attack," said Haldeman.
The machine is still in use in some states and is "very, very fragile," he said ".
"They can be remotely attacked by sophisticated attackers and let them lie about the election results.
"Five States use a touchscreen voting system that leaves no paper traces to detect hackers, and nine other states use a mix of paper ballot and digital counting methods that do not leave traces
Elections at the state and county levels are another aspect of the system under review.
Harri Hursti, an election security expert in the HBO documentary hacker Democracy, said information technology security personnel in many jurisdictions are under-staffed.
Government officials often outsource election management and software to companies that people are not aware of, in some cases, "12 people in strip shops," he said ".
Nevertheless, as computers make the election process faster and cheaper, many voting jurisdictions and elected officials do not quickly adopt a rigorous paper approach.
"I think there are a lot of people who don't understand how computers work," said Marianne Schneider, chairman of the election accuracy nonprofit validation vote.
"They feel like if you can order a hoagie at Wawa [
On the touch screen]
Then you should be able to do something similar by voting.
"20 years ago, even 10 years ago, it was impossible to guess that social media would be one of the biggest storylines in the national elections.
Still, the United States is there because of a broad and targeted misinformation campaign against Russian agents.
The world's social media giants facebook and Twitters continue their global acquisitions, although from a regulatory perspective in the United StatesS.
The criticism of the government and the news media has trained them.
Over the past year, these companies have been slowly disclosing how Russian agents have used their platforms to intensify
Before the 2016 election, there were differences in American culture, both buying advertisements and promoting organic content through false accounts.
Facebook revealed in October that more than 0. 12 billion users may have seen content from Russian operations.
Twitter recently said that more than 677,000 users interacted with posts from more than 50,000 automatic "robot" accounts related to Russia. "I think [the companies]
"I'm really trying to get their house in order, so they're not the topic before the mid-term elections," Philip Napoli said . " Professor of Public Policy at Duke University, studying media regulation.
Facebook is rolling out a new algorithm that will highlight posts from friends and family and reduce the amount of internal capacity from businesses, brands and media.
Twitter says it has raised the discovery rate of automatic content creators by 60% since October to December 2017 alone.
Some lawmakers are pushing for more disclosure on social media about who is paying for political advertising, as are television and newspapers.
Nevertheless, it is not clear how any changes made will effectively prevent the polarization information of evil actors.
The use of social media by Russian robots and trolls has never stopped.
It is very cheap and very effective.
"Whenever a solution is implemented, the workaround starts," Napoli said . ".
"I just don't know how you keep these platforms running on a scale, not a porous platform where a lot of error messages can still be passed.
"After the initial denial, Facebook has begun to accept that its platform has an amazing impact.
Less than a decade ago, social media was praised for fuelling civil resistance in Tunisia.
Now, it is under attack for weakening democracy.
"This is not a rare pattern we see in new communications technologies --
"In quite a short turnaround time, from Utopia to the end of the world," Napoli said . ".
As in 2006, no one has ever heard of Twitter by 2020 and 2024, and people will use brand new social tools and companies to share information.
In terms of hacking the voting infrastructure, a danger is more subtle than changing people's votes after voting.
"Maybe the threat model is not only that someone wants to win, or that someone wants to boost their favorite candidate to win, it could just cause damage and undermine trust in the system, hursti said.
In short, the attacker may break the election by destroying everything related to the election.
"All of a sudden, an attack, you go to the voter registration system and randomly select a party to make the primary election a complete disaster," he said . ".
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires states to implement a "centralized, interactive statewide voter registration list," which will contain the names and registration information of each legally registered voter in each state.
While the rule may have improved voting efficiency, it has also created a number of new loopholes.
Emily Shaw of the nonpartisan Sunshine Foundation wrote that the new requirements, coupled with the lack of sufficient funds to strengthen security, "create the possibility of a collaborative attack that never existed ".
Many jurisdictions have also begun to digitize the way registered voters register at polling stations.
In most cases, electronic voting books for laptops or tablets have begun to replace three
Ring binder used by local election staff in each district or constituency.
As at March 2017, there were 32 jurisdictions using e-commerce
According to data from the National Conference of the State Council, opinion polls books.
In many cases, electronic
A voting book can scan a person's driver's license to allow them to vote, a process that avoids data entry errors --
But Hursti says this is an example of another technology that introduces an entry point where malicious actors can introduce networksthreat.
"The driver's license has never been intended to be used in this environment, and barcodes can be used to inject attacks," Hursti said . ".
"In fact, I think this is a place where technology can do a lot of things for democracy, can make a lot of things easier, it has to be brought here in a very responsible way, otherwise this would be a low hanging fruit for the attacker, causing damage.
"Given that the safety of the electoral roll and ballot box is regulated by the government, if not always strictly enforced or well enforced,
Cyber security in the campaign world is almost completely unregulated.
In 2016, the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign team took up the entire weeks of news cycles and open conversations with a large number of emails.
Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Institute of Computer Science, said phishing attacks that collect similar data are cheap, effective, difficult to track, and are well suited to the US election system.
Unreliable phishing
"You may send 500 phishing emails and only get a few replies," Weaver said . ".
But when you have [435]
There are dozens of potential employees in each game as a target and you will see a lot of such low
The level attack is very effective when you only use the law of large numbers.
"It's mainly up to each individual movement to oversee and implement their own cybersecurity and force employees to do two things like that --
Factor certification.
"The campaign needs to think like a goal," Weaver said . ".
"Because they are.
"What connects all of these policies is messaging.
Even without actually changing any of the votes, the attack of 2016 exposed the possibility that the voting system could be hacked, a way that could not be discovered. So a long-
The terminology risk facing the United States is that if the voting public is not sure if the system is manipulated, they will lose confidence in the concept of a fair democratic system --
Especially in the absence of evidence, where elected officials complain about illegal voting.
"Unfortunately we are in a situation where experts like me can't reassure people that the system is foolproof because it's not," Halderman said . ".
"As voting technology does not have a major new investment every year, the system becomes weaker and weaker, and unfortunately our confidence base on the results of the election is getting worse," he also explained . ".
That is, in 2018 or 2020, Russia or other hostile parties may support the Democratic Party behind the Democratic Party in an attempt to establish a divided and deadlocked government, or simply to mix up voter registration, create confusion and frustration among the public who are clearly prone to further polarization.
"2016 may be Russia, but it may be China in the future, it may be North Korea, it may be other countries that are developing complex networks --
"Offensive ability," said Haldeman.
"The fact is that the election is intervened through the Internet --
The means are cheap and effective.