Category Archives: Christoper Wlaschin

Election tech vendors say they’re securing their systems. Does anyone believe them?

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The last few years have been an awakening for Election Systems & Software. Before 2016, very few people were publicly pressing the company to change the way it handled its cybersecurity practices. Now, the nation’s leading manufacturer of election technology has become a lightning rod for critics. Security experts say the small number of companies that dominate the nation’s election technology market, including ES&S, have failed to acknowledge and remedy vulnerabilities that lie in systems used to hold elections across the country. Once left to obscurity, the entire ecosystem has been called into question since the Russian government was found to have interfered with the 2016 presidential campaign. While there has never been any evidence to suggest that any voting machines were compromised, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI recently issued a memo that all 50 states were at least targeted by Russian intelligence. The peak of the criticism came after the Voting Village exhibition […]

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ES&S security lead: We trust our process over DEF CON village findings

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While there are a number of companies that build and sell election-related technology, ES&S has been the most notable as of late. The company’s CEO released a letter last week that took issue with calls from lawmakers to work with anonymous researchers, like those at the DEF CON Voting Village that uncovered various vulnerabilities in election-related hardware and software. “We will not, however, provide or submit any hardware, software, source code or other intellectual property to unvetted, anonymous security researchers, nor would we make public any assessments of vulnerability findings, because providing or making available secure information to individuals or groups whose interests may counter the United States’ interests would be irresponsible and may in fact, jeopardize the integrity of elections,” the letter from ES&S CEO Tom Burt read. That letter was poorly received by both Capitol Hill and the security research community, who both felt the response was inadequate […]

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ES&S security lead: We trust our process over DEF CON village findings

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While there are a number of companies that build and sell election-related technology, ES&S has been the most notable as of late. The company’s CEO released a letter last week that took issue with calls from lawmakers to work with anonymous researchers, like those at the DEF CON Voting Village that uncovered various vulnerabilities in election-related hardware and software. “We will not, however, provide or submit any hardware, software, source code or other intellectual property to unvetted, anonymous security researchers, nor would we make public any assessments of vulnerability findings, because providing or making available secure information to individuals or groups whose interests may counter the United States’ interests would be irresponsible and may in fact, jeopardize the integrity of elections,” the letter from ES&S CEO Tom Burt read. That letter was poorly received by both Capitol Hill and the security research community, who both felt the response was inadequate […]

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Continue reading ES&S security lead: We trust our process over DEF CON village findings→