Security Experts: U.S. Election Faces Hacking Threat

The Nov. 8 election is a prime target for hackers, according to a bipartisan organization of former security and intelligence community officers.

In light of the email hack at the Democratic National Committee, members of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group released a statement.

"Election officials at every level of government should take this lesson to heart: our electoral process could be a target for reckless foreign governments and terrorist groups," reads the statement from 31 members of the group and released last week. "The voting process is critical to our democracy and must be proof against such attacks or the threat of such attacks. Voting processes and results must receive security akin to that we expect for critical infrastructure."

The members of the Aspen Institute group include Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of Homeland Security, retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, and William Webster, a former director of the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The letter, as reported by The Daily Beast, calls for an immediate investigation of the leak, because if it was an attempt to influence the election by a foreign nation, then "this is an attack not on one party but on the integrity of American democracy."

"If a foreign power can hack an email server and be undetected, it can do the same to an Internet voting server," David Jefferson, formerly of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and a voting technology advisor to California's secretary of state, told NBC News. "I've always considered Internet-facing election systems to be a national security threat."

A major issue in election security is the age and condition of voting machines all over the nation. After issues in the 2000 presidential election, the government funded a $2 billion overhaul of the country's election mechanisms. Those machines have a lifespan of 10 to 15 years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which says 43 states are still using decade-old voting machines.

• Electronic Voting Machines Vulnerable as Hacking Incidents Surge
• Ex-CIA Officer Fred Fleitz: 'Stunning' Security Lapse on DNC Computers