Georgia's Entire Voter File Potentially Compromised After Machine Thefts
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Georgia's entire voter file potentially compromised after machine thefts
Police said thieves stole two express poll machines, set up for a special school board election.
[...] Sometime overnight, police said a burglar stole two machines used to check in voters. These are not the machines people voted on, but are used to check in voters.
The Fulton County Elections Director said they were locked up in a suitcase like this one inside the center. Poll workers noticed the case was gone this morning when they got in to open the polls.
"It's a statewide voter file that's on there. It has name, address, and date of birth of all the voters in the state of Georgia," Barron said.
While Barron told Channel 2 Action News the data is password protected, for Georgia State University cybersecurity researcher Don Hunt, it's not 100 percent secure.
"Depending on the type of shell that they use and the type of software they're using, that's typically not that hard to break for someone who really knows what they're doing," Hunt said.
[...] And while Atlanta police works to identify the burglars and track down the missing machines,"""Raffensperger has a message to all local elections leaders.
"You need to do whatever you can do to secure your equipment," Raffensperger said.
The state will soon roll out a new, $100 million voting system which Raffensperger said will have a new iPad-based check-in system, which they can track and delete data remotely if they get stolen.
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