Washington – With less than 80 days until the general election, the co-founder of CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity technology company, warned that the federal government and states should do more to protect election infrastructure from cyberattacks by malicious actors.
In an interview Sunday with “Face the Nation,” Dmitri Alperovitch, who co-founded CrowdStrike and worked as its chief technology officer, said he was concerned about attacks on voting infrastructure, such as voter databases, voting systems and voting reporting systems.
“These are very, very vulnerable to hacking,” Alperovitch said. “And we need to do more to protect them.”
Alperovitch said the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of Homeland Security that works to defend against cyberattacks, was scanning election systems for the November election, but said “more needs to be done.”
In addition to hacking electoral infrastructure, Alperovitch said there are several ways foreign entities can interfere in U.S. elections, including by hacking into campaigns and political organizations like the Russians did in 2016, and by engaging in influence operations like the intelligence community China has warned Iran and Russia are joining.
But Alperovitch said his “biggest concern” was the “hackability of our electoral systems, both from the influence side and from the voting perspective.”
“I can tell you from my experience that voting is the hardest thing to secure when it comes to cybersecurity. It’s literally the hardest problem there is,” he said.
Alperovitch said the safest way to protect the electoral system is by using paper ballots, either through post-in ballots or by personal ballots with a paper record.
“Paper cannot be hacked. However, there are legitimate concerns about logistics,” he said. “I’m not so much worried about foreign entities interfering in the paperwork, but we need to make sure states are ready to take in the enormous number of mail-in ballot papers that will come in.”
Many states are expanding post-in-vote for November because they are working to reduce the risk of exposure to the coronavirus. But the expected influx of post-in-ballots has raised concerns about whether state election systems are ready to handle the added strain, as well as the U.S. Postal Service, now under the helm of a major Republican donor, Louis DeJoy, as postmaster generally, can meet critical deadlines for voting.
Alperovitch said states should “clear up their options” by November 3 and ensure they are now ready instead of election day.
“I think we were not prepared for this and many people assumed that the disease would go away in a few months,” he said. “Obviously it’s still here and now a lot of people are worried about personal votes and we need to make sure they have a chance to do this safely.”
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