“Not Just Ballots: Tennessee Hack Shows Election Websites Are Vulnerable, Too”


Miles Parks for NPR:

When a WWE wrestler, especially one known for his demonic antics and a move calledthe “tombstone piledriver,” runs for mayor of your county, you know your election is going to get more attention than usual.

But in Knox County, Tenn., it wasn’t the fact that Glenn Jacobs, also known to wrestling fans as Kane, was running for mayor that gained national attention on the county primary day, May 1.

It was that the county’s election website, at the time the site was supposed to begin posting election results, came under attack.

Malicious cyber actors shut down the county website and broke into the web server, according to county officials and a report done by the cyber security firm Sword and Shield.

The episode didn’t have an effect on the outcome of the election, but it shut down the website for an hour and illustrated how malicious actors in the cyber-sphere can have an impact on democracy without actually affecting vote tallies.

Share this: