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An Eponymous Coward writes:

Five years ago, Vladimir Putin publicly fumed that the US was interfering with internal Russian politics. He felt that the US emboldened local protestors by claiming that the 2012 Russian elections (which he won with more than a 46 point margin) were rigged. It's been said he's seeking payback by discrediting American elections. Not necessarily to help one candidate over another (Putin has said "We don't back anyone – it's not our business"), but to throw the legitimacy of US elections into doubt the same way he believes the US delegitimatized his landslide victory of 2012.

We've been told that hacking the vote would be difficult due to the wide variety of locally implemented voting systems. But that doesn't necessarily apply to state-level voter registration databases. Introducing minor amounts of errors, even just 1% of the total records could cause chaos on election day. If 1 in every 100 voters is turned away from the polls, that would have enormous repercussions on the election, far greater than the hanging chads had in Florida. There have already been reports of the exfiltration of registration data in two states and attacks on registration systems in another 20 states.

Now a white hat hacker has demonstrated just how easy it is to modify registration data in Indiana using only publicly available data.

Original Submission