Should We Be Afraidof Election-DayCyber Attacks?by Dan Centinello

When the hacker known only asGuccifer 2.0 released a wealth ofconfidential documents includinginternal emails originating frommembers of the Democratic Party,it opened the door for Donald

Trump and the Republican partyto point out potential corruption in

the party.

But it also raised the eyebrows of Americans everywhere,

who began to question not only the Democratic Party’s

ethics, but the overall security of the election systems and

voting machines. If a hacker like Guccifer 2.0 is able to so

easily crack open the trove of email chains and documents

that were supposedly securely exchanged by the

Democratic party, what’s to prevent the possibility of cyber

attacks on or around election day that could potentially

change the outcome of the election as a whole?

These fears have been addressed byboth politicians and high-levelmembers of national security. Afterthe breach at the Democratic NationalConvention, CIA Director JohnBrennan stated, "if there has beensome manipulation of the electionprocess here, this is going to besomething that this government andour country is going to have to lookat.” While Brennan and CIA haveundoubtedly spent time investigatingthe hacks and searching for potentialfraud, relatively little has come of theinvestigations thus far.

Electronic voting systems, one of the primarypotential points of entry for hackers looking todisrupt the election, seem to be vulnerable. Thepossibility remains that hackers could, in theory,hack into these machines–some of them about 10years old and reportedly lacking up-to-date security

features–and manipulate vote counts.

Large-scale manipulation, however, appearsunlikely. To have a tangible impact on the

election–that is, manipulating enough votes to causethe electoral college to shift from one candidate tothe other–would require an immense number of

entries into local computerized machines. The morelikely scenario appears to be the possibility ofhacking wireless machines or larger-scale

documentation and international communicationleaks.

Despite the fact that Russian–or domestic,for that matter–cyber attacks are veryunlikely to change the outcome of theNovember election, many are calling forupgraded and updated measures to ensurethe safety and security of their vote comeNovember 8.

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