Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / GVA's Garrity on Election Cybersecurity: Is It Hackable?(Audio)

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GVA's Garrity on Election Cybersecurity: Is It Hackable?(Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: Broadcasting live to New York, Bloomberg eleventh to Washington, d
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  Speaker 1: dot Com. This is taking stock. I'm Kathleen Hays along
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  Speaker 1: with p M. Fox. Let's like, just about anything and
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  Speaker 1: everything can be hacked this in this day and age.
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  Speaker 1: But what about the coming presidential election? Is the proper
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  Speaker 1: cybersecurity infrastructure in place? And oh boy, how about maybe
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  Speaker 1: updating some outdated voting machines A special guest look at that,
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  Speaker 1: PIM guess we'll be speaking with David Carty about cybersecurity
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  Speaker 1: and the upcoming election. Right now, though, let's go to
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  Speaker 1: of the other stories we're following today. Thank you Catherine
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  Speaker 1: from the Bloomberg Newsroom. I'm Jill Schneider. This news update
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  Speaker 1: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is in Youngstown, Ohio, where
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  Speaker 1: thank you, And now let's get a quick check of
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  Speaker 1: the market. Stole Industrial laverage up seventy points at eighteen thousand,
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  Speaker 1: sixty six, smp F I founded up seven point, the
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  Speaker 1: NASTAC up thirty points at fifty two sixty three, and
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  Speaker 1: that's a Bloomberg business slash. This is taking stock with
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  Speaker 1: pim Box and Kathleens on Bloomberg Radio. Over the weekend,
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  Speaker 1: Congressional Democrats, they scrambled to figure out the scope of
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  Speaker 1: an unprecedented leite that we're view the personal cell phone
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  Speaker 1: numbers and email addresses of nearly two hundred current and
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  Speaker 1: former Democrats in the House of Representatives. The posting of
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  Speaker 1: an online spreadsheet contained this personal information with lawmakers as
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  Speaker 1: well as senior staffers. Is this something that could affect
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  Speaker 1: the election, and indeed, could the election itself be hacked?
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  Speaker 1: We turned now to David Garretty. He is a principal
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  Speaker 1: at g v A Research, a columnist at Investopia Investopedia,
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  Speaker 1: and he can be followed on Twitter at g v
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  Speaker 1: A Research. David, thanks for being here, Thanks for making
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  Speaker 1: me stumble on investopedia. UM, tell us about hacking and
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  Speaker 1: we've learned about this revelation of cell phone numbers and
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  Speaker 1: email addresses from Democrats in the House. Is it possible
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  Speaker 1: that that could also mean that the computer and the
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  Speaker 1: tallying system for our national election could be hacked. Well,
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  Speaker 1: him to sort of address the issues. Um, if we
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  Speaker 1: go back to the two thousand election, we remember hanging
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  Speaker 1: Chad's down in the state of Florida. We were basically
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  Speaker 1: reminded of the fact that, uh, the election in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand was decided by the Supreme Court voting in favor
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  Speaker 1: of George W. Bush. Now, Congress in two thousand two
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  Speaker 1: passed an act called the Help America Vote Act, and
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  Speaker 1: this made available but four billion dollars with the funding
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  Speaker 1: which was used to go out and purchase voting machines. Um.
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  Speaker 1: These were put in place, but there hasn't been much
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  Speaker 1: investment made in terms of the infrastructure, if you will,
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  Speaker 1: of the vote casting system. Since so we're operating in
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  Speaker 1: a situation right now where in two thousand sixteen, we
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  Speaker 1: have forty three states that are using electronic voting machines
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  Speaker 1: that are at least ten years old, and out of
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  Speaker 1: those number, fourteen of those states have voting machines that
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  Speaker 1: are fifteen years or older. Now, bear in mind that
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  Speaker 1: most of these voting machines rely upon a Microsoft Windows
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  Speaker 1: operating system, except the operating system that they're using is
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  Speaker 1: most likely Windows XP, which Microsoft stops supporting back in
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  Speaker 1: April of two thousand fourteen, which from a practical standpoint
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  Speaker 1: means that there have been no security updates, no patches,
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  Speaker 1: no support for these systems since April of two thousand fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: which raises the question that if there were an interest,
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  Speaker 1: someone could probably find a way to degrade the operating
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  Speaker 1: performance of those machines, not so much as to change
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  Speaker 1: the votes, us most likely to impede the ability of
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  Speaker 1: voters to actually cast their ballots through an electronic machine,
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  Speaker 1: which is why you're seeing people say, look, we need
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  Speaker 1: to ensure for this presidential election coming up in November,
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  Speaker 1: that there's a sufficient supply of paper ballots available. So
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  Speaker 1: enter hacking. I get that the voting machines are obsolescent,
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  Speaker 1: not mode. And I love the fact you point out
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  Speaker 1: that they're you know, they're running on an old, outdated
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  Speaker 1: Microsoft system. But you know this is this the state
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  Speaker 1: of the world, and we forget sometimes is how far
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  Speaker 1: behind a lot of things are. How could we be
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  Speaker 1: hacked Someone just goes in and changes the votes from
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  Speaker 1: Clinton to Trump or Trump to Clinton. There have been
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  Speaker 1: experiments that have been done, you know, by the government
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  Speaker 1: in terms of there's the Argonne Lab, which is part
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  Speaker 1: of the system of nationwide labs. We have Lawrence Livermore,
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  Speaker 1: Sandy are others where they've actually run experiments or tests
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  Speaker 1: as a sort of a weekend experiment, and they've been
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  Speaker 1: able to hack into voting machines and actually change votes. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the point I'm raising here isn't so much the fact
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  Speaker 1: that votes are changed, but the fact that you degrade
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  Speaker 1: the system. If people look at past elections and people
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  Speaker 1: look at questions of voter disenfranchisement, people have raised concerns
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  Speaker 1: about voter ID laws, But most of these older machines
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  Speaker 1: are in districts that are less well off, that can't
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  Speaker 1: afford to won't spend the money to upgrade the infrastructure.
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  Speaker 1: And clearly where there has been voter disenfranchisement in the past,
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  Speaker 1: it's been in terms of lower socio economic classes or districts.
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  Speaker 1: So if there were efforts to not only impede turnout,
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  Speaker 1: but to impede the performance of those people who do
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  Speaker 1: turn out to vote, obviously finding a way to degrade
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  Speaker 1: the performance of the voting machines would be one way
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  Speaker 1: to do that. For eighty two dollars, I understand that
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  Speaker 1: you can buy a Sequoia, a VC advantage machine. It's
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  Speaker 1: one of the oldest machines still in use. Voting machines
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  Speaker 1: such as these are in views in places like Louisiana, Virginia,
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  Speaker 1: and New Jersey, Pennsylvania. Took a Princeton, a computer science professor,
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  Speaker 1: about five minutes to hack into the machine. Right now,
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  Speaker 1: the challenge that we have here in the United States,
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  Speaker 1: and so we've got about, you know, nine thousand different
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  Speaker 1: districts that have controlled either on a local level or
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  Speaker 1: a state level with respect to supporting voting machines. Now
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  Speaker 1: there there, there are, there's not a standard of machines
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  Speaker 1: that are being used. So arguably from a hacking standpoint,
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  Speaker 1: the fact that you've got this heterogeneous infrastructure. Maybe some
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  Speaker 1: extent serves to impede any efforts to hack. But the
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  Speaker 1: point can be made here and is made here that
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  Speaker 1: this is something we should be concerned about. From the standpoint,
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  Speaker 1: we look at a voting process that should be transparent,
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  Speaker 1: it should have high integrity, and it should be one
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  Speaker 1: which in the current environment, is not capable of being
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  Speaker 1: rigged ten seconds. Donald Trump has famously said, I'll look
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  Speaker 1: out the election could be rigged to stay. Garritty agree that,
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  Speaker 1: at least in terms of cybersecurity, it could. I think
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  Speaker 1: that this argues very much for using paper ballots in
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  Speaker 1: the upcoming election. All Right, did Garritty? You can find
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  Speaker 1: the terrific essay he wrote a couple of weeks ago
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  Speaker 1: on Investopedia. Dave Garrity is principle at g b A
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  Speaker 1: Research joining us today in our New York study. Thinks.
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  Speaker 1: So much for coming in, Dave. I'm Catheine Hayes along
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  Speaker 1: with PM Fox. This is taking Stock on Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 1: the SMP at two thousand two twenty five