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Russia's military intelligence agency launched an attack before Election Day 2016 on a U.S. company that provides voting services and systems, according to a top secret NSA report 

It's unclear how successful the Russian hackers were at affecting election results, but 

, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute, told MPR News host Kerri Miller that the hackers may have only been expecting to break through in a few instances. 

"They were spreading the net broadly," Weaver said. "They weren't trying to break into one or a couple counties. They were trying to break into thousands and hoping to get one, or two or a dozen. And, depending on their motives, you only need to succeed at breaking into a couple."

Weaver speculated on the hackers' motives, suggesting they may have just wanted to spread chaos and put the election results in doubt. 

"Affecting a large swing on the vote through hacking is hard. But, for example, in this election, you would have actually only needed to swing about 40,000 votes in the right places because of the systems that we use," he said, "you don't even necessarily need to tamper with the vote. 

"You just need to tamper with the confidence and cause chaos. Especially if one of your candidates is going to amplify that chaos should the candidate lose." 

Weaver said the Russian hackers used fairly simple techniques.

"The actual mechanism is not the high-tech ninja stuff you hear about, but the basic techniques used by everybody, from government hackers to the annoyingly persistent teenagers," Weaver said, "This sort of stuff works." 

To secure elections, Weaver suggested an even more simple solution: paper ballots, which lend themselves more easily to audit. 

Weaver dismissed voter fraud and voter ID movements as, "clearly voter-suppression mechanisms targeted at the poor.

He noted evidence showing that in-person voter fraud is rare. 

And to effectively swing an election, you need to tamper with how votes are counted, Weaver said. "That's why we so worry about electronic voting systems."

To hear Weaver's full interview, use the audio player above.

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A recently leaked NSA report says Russia's military intelligence agency launched a hacking attack before Election Day 2016 on a U.S. company that provides voting services and systems.

According to a top secret NSA report published by The Intercept on Monday--Russia's military intelligence agency launched an attack before Election Day 2016 on a U.S. company that provides voting services and systems. What does this mean for the future security of U.S. elections? MPR News host Kerri Miller spoke to Nicholas Weaver, a lecturer at UC Berkley and researcher at the International Computer Science Institute for more information on cyber security and hacking the American vote.

How vulnerable are our elections to hacking?

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