https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-chicago-vulnerable-elections-hackers-20190129-story.html
By Todd Lighty
Chicago Tribune
January 29, 2019
The Chicago elections board can't guarantee the integrity of voting
results in the event of a natural disaster or cyber attack, the city's
watchdog warned Tuesday in a highly critical report of the agency's
operations.
The wide-ranging audit by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson also concluded
that the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners does not post many job
openings and has not conducted employee performance reviews in a at least
10 years. Ferguson said the board was warned a decade ago about many of
the financial problems he's uncovered and failed to correct them.
It's the technological vulnerabilities, however, that the inspector
general's office found that could attract the most public attention.
Governments have become increasingly concerned about computer hacks and
the possibility of meddling in elections.
In the 2016 presidential race, Russians hacked into the Illinois State
Board of Elections voter registration database, and compromised the names,
addresses, birth dates and partial Social Security numbers of about 76,000
voters, federal authorities and election officials have said.
In Chicago, Ferguson found that the elections board does not have an
emergency plan in place, has not inventoried its computer hardware and
software, and has not conducted any audits or risk assessments during the
past dozen years, leaving the outcome of city elections vulnerable to a
computer hack or other catastrophe. He said the lack of a list of computer
items could impede the election board’s ability to recover from
disruptions.
[...]
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