Voting machines are vulnerable to hackers

The elections are coming and there are a lot of issues that must be solved before. According to a Computer Science professor, the voting machines from South Caroline are vulnerable to hackers. This happens because the system is online. FBI already said that some Russian hackers tried to enter in the voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona.

• Some people are worried because the voting machines for the elections are not safe.
• Hackers managed to steal data from voters and there are more who will try.

However, the State Election Commission promised that there will be no problems. They hired computer security experts and work with the state’s computer security agency to protect the system. There are systems which might be vulnerable even if they are not online. Dr. Buell said that the vulnerabilities do not come from the internet, they come from flash cards or updates that you might think are safe. The virus could be introduced when the voting machines were linked to a computer that has been on the internet. Everything is possible and that is why the authorities should pay more attention if they want the elections to develop as they should.

It seems that the computers were never been connected to the internet  because their only purpose was as voting machines.  The authorities said it is impossible to hack those machines because they have high security. Dr. Buell said that they should be aware of the danger. Hackers became smarter and the are able to do more than we can imagine. They might be preparing this for some months and those voting machines are not safe. There are many people there who do not trust that system.

What do you think? Are those voting machines safe? People managed to hack NASA or CIA. How long will it be until they will be able to hack those machines too?   This system relies on new technologies, with an optical scanner. They also use this to read paper ballots in which voters fill in next to their favorite candidate.

There are people who think that the traditional way of voting is the safest. However, there are millions of people who vote and counting all their votes could be a hard job. These machines make the election easier, but they are also not the safest systems. If Russian hackers already managed to steal data from voters in some states.

Image source: Wikipedia