WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd August, 2018) Enhancements of security measures for voting machines put in place since the 2016 US elections make it unlikely that hackers could change vote totals in the upcoming midterm congressional elections, Associate Deputy US Attorney General Sujit Ramay told Congress.
"Our assessment is that it would be exceedingly complex to change vote totals," Ramay told the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Tuesday. "Federal partners and the state and local governments are taking the threat seriously and so the level of cyber security - the level of physical security which is [a] necessary component to get to the cyber security around voting machines - has [been] greatly enhanced subsequent to the 2016 elections."
Ramay explained that potential hacks of voter rolls present "more of a vulnerability than the actual vote count process."
Reports of hackers gaining access to voter rolls became a major issue in the 2016 US election. The activity was characterized as gaining access and possibly stealing personal information from voter rolls but there was never any indication that vote totals had been altered.
Earlier on Tuesday, Microsofts Digital Crimes Unit claimed that it had successfully executed a court order to disrupt and transfer control of six internet domains created by an international hacker group known as Fancy Bears.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the microsoft claim groundless.
The Fancy Bear group is thought by numerous countries to be linked to the Russian government, but the claim has never been proven, and Moscow has repeatedly denied any attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election.
Russian officials have said the allegations of election meddling have been invented to excuse the election loss of a presidential candidate as well as to deflect public attention from actual election fraud, corruption and other pressing issues.
