Hackers could skew US elections - tech - 09 October 2007 - New Scientist Tech: The web may not deserve its reputation as a great democratic tool, security experts say. They predict voters will increasingly be targeted by internet-based dirty tricks campaigns, and that the perpetrators will find it easier to cover their tracks.

While politicians have been quick to embrace the internet as an enabler for democracy, established security threats like spam emails and botnets – collections of "zombie" computers remotely controlled by hackers – all open new avenues for fraudulent campaigning. So said experts at an e-crime summit at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania last week.

Dirty tricks are not new. On US election day in 2002, the lines of a "get-out-the-voters" phone campaign sponsored by the New Hampshire Democratic Party were clogged by prank calls. In the 2006 election, 14000 Latino voters in Orange County, California, received letters telling them it was illegal for immigrants to vote.

But in those cases the Republican Party members and supporters were traced and either charged or named in the press. Online dirty tricks will be much less easy to detect, security researchers say.
Misinformation campaigns

Spam email could be used against voters, experts say, by giving the wrong location for a polling station, or, as in the Orange County fraud, incorrect details about who has the right to vote. Although a low proportion of people fall for spam emails, a larger audience can be reached than with posted letters, and in close races every voter counts.

Telephone attacks like the New Hampshire prank calls would be harder to trace if made using internet telephony instead of landlines, says Rachna Dhamija of the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society.

Calls could even be made using a botnet. This would make tracing the perpetrator even harder, because calls wouldn't come from a central location. What's more, the number of calls that can be made is practically limitless.

Internet calls might also be made to voters to sow misinformation, says Christopher Soghoian at Indiana University in Bloomington. "Anonymous voter suppression is going to become a reality."

The internet allows more direct attacks on other candidates possible too, as John McCain, Republican presidential candidate hopeful, discovered. His MySpace page used an image hosted on another person's site. When that person switched the image to one stating McCain had reversed his position on gay marriage, the change was reflected on McCain's page and he was left red-faced.

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