美国国家公共电台 NPR After DNC Hack, Cybersecurity Experts Worry About Old Machines, Vote Tampering

After DNC Hack 1, Cybersecurity Experts Worry About Old Machines, Vote Tampering 2

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Security experts say that Russian government hackers 4 tapped into the database of the Democratic National Committee and probably other targets. But some officials are worried that votes themselves could be compromised by hackers and potentially tip the results. Now, most states have moved back to paper-backed systems in recent years, but that still leaves a number of states vulnerable, including some political swing states. Zeynep Tufekci is a professor at the University of North Carolina where she studies the social impact of technology. Professor Tufekci joins us now from the university. Thanks so much for being with us.

ZEYNEP TUFEKCI: Thank you for inviting 5 me.

SIMON: How easy is it to hack into an electronic voting machine?

TUFEKCI: Unfortunately, too easy, and this has been demonstrated again and again by security researchers around the country. In my old workplace at Princeton University at the Center for Information Technology Policy, we had this lounging area with comfy couches and the researchers had decorated the place with a voting machine that had been hacked 6 to play Pac-Man instead of counting votes (laughter). And they had done this without even...

SIMON: You zany tech people.

TUFEKCI: Well, they had done this without even tampering with the, you know, no-tamper protections the system was supposed to have had. And when they hacked this, the machine had been in use in jurisdictions 7 around the country with more than 9 million voters. And the worry is in a lot of states that are critical to the election - swing states - they don't even have a paper trail that you can audit 8 with. That's really worrisome given how crucial elections are.

SIMON: Well, I mean, let me state this to you then this baldly - is it possible that election results could be tampered 9 with?

TUFEKCI: It's not a straightforward 10 thing in the sense that, you know, the doomsday scenario 11 where some foreign power or some domestic player hacks 12 all of them because the machines as a - the election machines we have are a patchwork 13 of different systems. It's kind of hard to pull off a centralized hack.

SIMON: Yeah.

TUFEKCI: But let's consider Georgia, which is running electronic-only machines. There's no paper trail. And the systems there...

SIMON: This is the state of Georgia, not the country.

TUFEKCI: It's the state of Georgia, of course, and the machines they're using are more than a decade old, so the hardware is falling apart. And the operating system they're using is Windows 2000, which hasn't been updated for security for years, which means it's a sitting duck. And Georgia traditionally votes for the Republican presidential candidate.

Now, this year, some polls are suggesting a close race. And let's assume there's an upset, and there's a 1 percent win by Hillary Clinton. And let's assume that people are objecting because this is kind of unexpected. There's no way to check. I feel this is such an important, crucial thing that security experts have been warning for 10 years, and maybe this attention with the DNC hack can get us focused on this issue that is not new but keeps not getting fix.

SIMON: Well, I say this as a Chicagoan - there was - there has been vote fraud with paper ballots 14, too.

TUFEKCI: Yes. Fraud comes in many ways, and there's no question that there are ways to steal elections based on paper. But it's easier and more possible to describe tamperproof paper protocols 15 and to implement 16 them. And because of security experts' concerns, a lot of states have moved to paper trails.

The number of states that don't have it include all of Georgia, parts of Pennsylvania, few places even in Florida. And Ohio does have a paper trail, but experts say it's not a reliable and worthy 17 one. So the number of states that are still affected 18 in part or in full by having no paper trail number 12 to 15, depending on how you count, and potentially up to 60 million voters, enough to swing an election.

SIMON: I guess we're thinking of foreign hackers or somebody with an interest in the election, but the way you describe it, it could also be a couple of 17-year-old students at - new to your high school.

TUFEKCI: I don't find the foreign power meddling 19 in U.S. elections that likely because the stakes are so high. I mean, if a foreign country comes, meddles 20 in U.S. elections, they know the U.S. will retaliate 21 very hard against something like that. So I'm not that worried that it's going to be a foreign power, but this lack of security means a corrupt 22 official, as you say, a teenage hacker 3.

We're just losing votes and not even knowing that you lost the votes. All of those are very real possibilities. So while we imagine these apocalyptic 23 scenarios 24 of some foreign power meddling, the real issue is we have the thing falling apart in 10 different ways that we're not fixing.

SIMON: Zeynep Tufekci is a professor at the University of North Carolina. Thanks very much for being with us.

TUFEKCI: Thank you for inviting me.