State election offices' emails are way too easy to hack

Voting booths.
(Image credit: iStock/hermosawave)

Only 4 percent of state election offices could actually stop hackers from sending emails from their official accounts, an alarming new study from cybersecurity firm Anomali has found. The study was provided to Axios, which published a story Monday that detailed just how easy it is to mess with elections.

The danger stems from how basic email is set up, Axios says. There are no security measures on basic email servers that ensure an email is actually coming from the address it's labeled with. State election systems — or anyone who wants email security — should install a combination of measures known as SPF and DMARC, which together tell recipients that an email is probably fake or can designate a message as spam.

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Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.