[Infowarrior] - This election was not hacked – but it was attacked

[Richard Forno]

This election was not hacked – but it was attacked
Richard Forno

November 9, 2016 6.06am EST

https://theconversation.com/this-election-was-not-hacked-but-it-was-attacked-67511

The presidential campaign of 2016 thankfully – and we can only hope officially – ended this evening. As of when this article was posted, there are no reports of widespread cyberattacks or other digital interference against state voting systems. Of course, since votes are still being tallied, we’re not in the clear yet. But current indications are that this was a fairly uneventful election, from a cybersecurity perspective at least.

So far, we’ve seen no public evidence of Russian hackers, 400-pound or otherwise, attacking individual voting machines from their bedrooms (to use a very tired old trope). There have been reports of brief computer problems, but they were easily remedied. And there’s no indication that state voter registration databases were compromised by hostile third parties.

Nevertheless, cybersecurity units of several states’ National Guard forces were mobilized ahead of the election, in a manner reminiscent of the reassuring and public show of force when airports reopened following 9/11. The military’s hackers at U.S. Cyber Command reportedly stood ready to retaliate against cyberattacks on the election – in particular, from Russia as well.

These possibilities and preparations reinforce the need for America to place a greater emphasis on election-related cybersecurity, if not also cybersecurity more generally. Even though nothing suspicious appears to suggest the election was “hacked,” we must still make improvements. At stake is the trustworthiness of the electoral systems and processes of the world’s leading democracy.

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But even if tonight’s vote count isn’t hacked, the damage is done. We must acknowledge that the integrity of America’s election system has been attacked successfully. Accordingly, once people have recovered from election 2016, we must implement a series of bipartisan, nationwide, rational and objective discussions about our election processes and technologies so that citizen trust in this most cherished national infrastructure – and feature of American democracy – can be restored.

https://theconversation.com/this-election-was-not-hacked-but-it-was-attacked-67511

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