In the final episode of Ken Burns’ The Civil War series, Shelby Foote remarked that the Civil War “made us an ‘is'” – we now refer to the United States as a single entity, rather than the original plural construction “The United States are…” The comment was notably ironic in the 1980’s, and is probably more so now.
The “are-ness” of the United States came up in another context this week – the possible hacking of a close 2016 presidential election. In a recent New York Times article a US justice department official argued that hacking a US election would be difficult, because individual state voting mechanisms are disparate and unconnected.
Perhaps, but it’s a dangerous attitude. First of all, good security practice never presumes that a hack is impossible. Second, the independence of state voting mechanics may be irrelevant. There are only a handful of states – perhaps just one or two – that will determine a close election. (Thanks, electoral college.) We need look no further than the year 2000, when Florida and the Supreme Court determined the presidential election – the latter definitely, and the former probably – in favor of George W. Bush.
Instead, it would be prudent to assume that hackers determined enough to attempt electoral manipulation are also smart enough to dismiss the specious “state independence” argument, and identify single-point-of-failure security weaknesses, such as the recount processes of one or two swing states.
Could the recount process of a single crucial state be hacked? I don’t see why not, although I wouldn’t care to estimate the odds. For speed and nominal accuracy, a recount procedure is likely to deploy an ad-hoc mix of computers, spreadsheets, databases, emails, and internet connectivity (rather than, say, hand calculators, paper-and-pencil, and the U.S. Postal Service) Under the pressures of time, improvised process, and people unused to secure operations, ironclad security is far from guaranteed.
It’s a genuine concern when government officials project a sanguine attitude about electoral security. We don’t protect valuable systems by assuming that everything is tasty – we protect them by thinking like a hacker. Even if the possibility of a true electoral hack is low – and I suspect it is, because an unusual confluence of opportunity and technique is required – it’s not sensible for government security officials to assume this is something that cannot or will not happen.