Cyber-security 202: Statewide voting databases at risk of ransomware attack

The story is from Washington Post by Joseph Marks

Top government cybersecurity officials are worried that ransomware, which has wreaked havoc by locking up the computer networks of businesses, schools and police stations, could be used to sow chaos during the 2020 election.

Perhaps most damaging of all would be if hackers used ransomware — an attack disabling an organization’s computers and encrypting its data — to lock up a state’s voter registration database in the days before an election. That would prevent local election officials from verifying that people are voting where they’re supposed to, Chris Krebs, the top cybersecurity official at the Homeland Security Department, said yesterday.

Krebs’s organization, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is launching a major initiative to ensure those databases are protected against ransomware, which was first reported by Reuters last week.

See full story here.