Experts say voting machines could be susceptible to hacking. (AP)
The recent cyber theft of millions of personnel records from the federal government was sophisticated and potentially crippling, but hackers with just rudimentary skills could easily do even more damage by targeting voting machines, according to security experts.
Voter fraud is nearly as old as elections themselves, and different states and precincts use different voting systems and machines. But in many cases, even the electronic ballots could be manipulated remotely, according to a new reportby the Commonwealth Security and Risk Management for the Virginia Information Technologies Agency. That report found that the AVS WINVote machines Virginia has used since 2002 have such flimsy security that an amateur hacker could change votes from outside a polling location.
"Our entire democracy depends on systems with minimal, easily bypassed security.”- Cris Thomas, Tenable Network Security,
“This means anyone could have broken into the machines from the parking lot,” said Cris Thomas, a strategist with the Columbia, Md.-based Tenable Network Security, one of the nation’s leading cyber and enterprise security firms. “Our entire democracy depends on systems with minimal, easily bypassed security.”
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