Alleged Russian hack reveals a deeply flawed election system

HOUSTON (AP) — Election officials have long contended the highly decentralized, often ramshackle U.S. voting system is its own best defense against vote-rigging and sabotage . New evidence from a leaked intelligence report indicates that hasn't deterred foreign adversaries from exploring ways to attack it anyway.

The document, attributed to the U.S. National Security Agency, describes alleged attempts by Russian military intelligence to hack into local election systems – the latest evidence of a broad and sophisticated foreign attack on the integrity of U.S. elections. It does not indicate whether actual vote-tampering occurred.

The NSA report adds significant new detail to previous U.S. intelligence assessments that alleged Russia-backed hackers had compromised elements of America's electoral machinery. It also suggests that attackers may also have been laying groundwork for future subversive activity.

The U.S. elections system is a patchwork of more than 3,000 jurisdictions overseen by the states with almost no federal oversight or standards. The attack sketched out in the NSA document appears designed specifically to cope with that sprawl.

The operation described in the document could have given attackers "a foothold into the IT systems of elections offices around the country that they could use to infect machines and launch a vote-stealing attack," said J. Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist. "We don't have evidence that that happened," he said, "but that's a very real possibility."

Computer scientists have proven in the lab once inside an election network, skillful attackers could manipulate pre-election programming of its systems and alter results without leaving a trace.