Major news media at risk from hackers as they prepare to report the US election results

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The second US presidential debate is shown on a TV screen at a restaurant. Photo: AP

Published: 1:04am, 9 Nov 2016Updated: 1:04am, 9 Nov 2016

Experts have warned for months that hackers could try to disrupt Tuesday’s election by penetrating local voting systems. But another target could prove easier to hack: US media reporting election results.

I’ll be amazed and shocked if we don’t see attacks tomorrow

Bobby Kuzma, a system engineer

Upguard, a California company that assesses how well companies protect themselves from hackers, has found that three major news organisations – The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and CBS News – tallied “pretty abysmal” scores on key criteria to thwart breaches.

All three are key sources of election results, with the AP perhaps the largest provider of election tabulations in the country. Upguard ranked 20 media companies in its survey.

Attacks on the computer systems of journalists and news organisations have become more frequent. Targets have included BuzzFeed, which Upguard ranked among the five most secure media but still was breached October 5. A week earlier, Newsweek’s website mysteriously crashed.

Hackers, both domestic and in foreign countries, including Russia, changed the course of the presidential campaign with penetrations of computer systems and thefts of internal emails and documents.

Media vehicles assemble outside the Jacob K. Javits Centre for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's election night event. Photo: AFP

A hack of servers storing information for the Democratic National Committee, revealed in June, led to committed Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s resignation in late July. Based on leaked emaills, she was accused of tilting the party nomination battle from Bernie Sanders toward Clinton. Another hack led her interim successor, Donna Brazile, to lose her job as a Democratic pundit on CNN in mid-October. Leaked emails showed that she’d passed town hall questions to Clinton ahead of time.