Can the Emmys be hacked? One contender tried to find out

Earlier this month, Nathan Fielder, the prankster genius behind Comedy Central’s “Nathan for You,” popped a 13-minute video on his YouTube feed titled “Can the Emmys be Hacked?”

To make his point, Fielder interviewed Carsten Schürmann. The Danish voting security expert demonstrated a potential breach in the Emmy voting process largely through phishing, which tricks people into sharing personal information that can then be used for scams.

With the nomination process closing Monday, the Television Academy, which presents the Emmy Awards, responded to our request for a response.

“The Television Academy has seen Mr. Fielder’s video parody,” an academy spokesman said in a statement. “Phishing scams like the one described by Mr. Fielder’s security expert are a concern for anyone with an online account, no matter the site, from banking to retail to social media. As is common practice for those looking to protect their online accounts, we strongly recommend our members confirm they are on the official Television Academy voting site before entering any of their account information. We are quite confident in the security of our site and are continuously monitoring for any phishing activities like those described.”

Schürmann, who earned a measure of acclaim when he hacked a voting machine at a 2017 conference in Las Vegas, showed Fielder on camera how he could create a phony web page by purchasing an internet domain similar to that used by the Television Academy and then duping the organization’s voters into unwittingly authenticating a hacker’s votes.

“All attacks are frighteningly easy once you’ve discovered them,” he told Fielder. And in an interview this week with The Washington Post, Schürmann talked of how he hopes Fielder’s clips leads to more awareness of what he considers a more important issue, voter fraud. He’s concerned about the potential for hacking during the upcoming midterms.

“These phishing attacks are successful in 40 percent of cases,” he said. “We trust our computers, and we trust our email. And we let our guards down all the time.”