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CYBER

Forget Russian Trolls, American Voting Systems Can Be Hacked

CYBER

VICE

Tech News, News & Politics, Technology, News

4645 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2019

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Imagine a world where one of our most critical instruments of democracy, voting systems, are connected to the internet where they are potentially vulnerable to hacking.


Well, thanks to the work of Motherboard contributor Kim Zetter, we now know that’s the reality we live in after she broke the story that researchers had found voting systems online, including systems in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida—all well known for being key swing states in presidential elections.


But for years election officials have said our voting systems, used for closely fought Presidential election of 2016 and in 2012 when it was Romney versus Obama, weren’t even on the internet and thus, they said, unhackable.


CYBER recently caught up with Kim to discuss her massive scoop and how Russian troll armies might not be the thing threatening American democracy or scaring the intelligence community tasked with protecting it come 2020. 


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Tann, it's got the code. It's going to launch.

0:10.8

It's a unit system. I know this. It's all the files of the whole park. It tells her everything.

0:19.2

Sir, he's uploading the virus.

0:21.8

Eagle won.

0:22.6

The package is being delivered.

0:26.1

Imagine a world where our most critical instruments of democracy

0:29.4

could be corrupted by hackers,

0:32.1

voting systems on the internet

0:33.9

where malicious actors, a world away,

0:36.4

could potentially manipulate them.

0:38.1

There's growing concern over whether hackers could potentially change votes by physically attacking

0:43.3

one of these computers.

0:44.6

Well, for years, election officials have said our voting systems, used for things like

0:49.1

the presidential elections in 2016 and 2012, and ostensibly for 2020, weren't even on the internet, and thus unhackable.

0:58.0

Meanwhile, we've all been focused on the information warfare emanating out of the Kremlin,

1:02.5

and what's going to happen to November's from now.

1:04.5

I first would like to mention election security.

1:08.0

This has been and will continue to be a top priority for the intelligence community.

1:14.1

We assess that foreign actors will view the 2020 U.S. elections as an opportunity to advance

1:20.8

their interests. But motherboard contributor Kim Zetter broke the news that, actually, researchers

1:26.7

found voting systems were online,

1:29.3

and these included systems in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida, all well known for being

...

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