Are the US Presidential elections under cyber threat?

With ever increasing cyber-attacks across the globe, seems like even the US Presidential elections could be hacked. The recent hacking of Democratic National Committee data, along with other electronic intrusions, has raised concerns about potential cyber-attacks that could affect the outcome of the US presidential race or other contests.

The campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said the hack that targeted the DNC had accessed an analytics data program that it used as well.The concern now for the cyber-security experts is if these attacks can jeopardize the integrity of the election campaign. Bob Hansmann of the security firm Forcepoint, which last year predicted a rise in political cyber intrusions, says a variety of groups might target US political campaigns.

"There are a lot of motivations out there," Hansmann told AFP. "It could be to disrupt, discredit or embarrass a candidate. Or it could be to disrupt the entire political system."

According to Hansmann, Campaign organizations can be soft targets, as they have large numbers of employees and volunteers who are constantly on the move, often with their own computers and smartphones with varying degrees of security.Almost anyone can employ hackers-for-hire to break into networks, steal data or "spoof" a campaign organization to deliver faked emails or social media messages, he says.

Steve Grobman, chief technical officer at Intel Security, says the hack at the DNC "is the latest high-profile reminder that information of tremendous value internally can be used as a devastating weapon if disclosed externally."Grobman calls it "a classic example of a 'hacktivist' event, where the objective of a cyber-attack is to steal an organization's sensitive information and disclose it in such a way that the reputational, operational or organizational damage to that organization is maximized."

Some officials believe its Russian handiwork but nothing has been proved as yet. But, the possibility of foreign intervention does make the matter grave. Though Russia has denied any involvement, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that "we have provisions in a place where, if we see evidence of a malicious attack by a state actor, we can impose, potentially, certain proportional penalties."

Security analysts say the US should take action once the source of the threat is known.This kind of attack "meets the definition of an act of cyber-war, and the US government should respond as such," said Dave Aitel, chief executive of the security firm Immunity Inc. in a blog post on the website ArsTechnica.

Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of the IBM security firm Resilient and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, also warns of the gravity of such attacks.

"This kind of cyber-attack targets the very core of our democratic process," Schneier said in a blog post."And it points to the possibility of an even worse problem in November - that our election systems and our voting machines could be vulnerable to a similar attack."

As the close and fiercely disputed 2000 presidential election showed, the results of a single state - like Florida - can determine the national outcome, potentially simplifying hackers' work. Schneier says interference from abroad cannot go without a response, saying that "if foreign governments learn that they can influence our elections with impunity, this opens the door for future manipulations, both document thefts and dumps like this one that we see and more subtle manipulations that we don't see."