Category Archives: voting machines

DEF CON’s Voting Village tests hacker-government collaboration

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The national conversation on election security came into sharp focus Friday at a renowned hacker conference as U.S. officials and security researchers sought common ground in raising awareness of potential vulnerabilities in election equipment. The goal was to have a more transparent conversation about those vulnerabilities without spreading undue public fear about them. The Voting Village at DEF CON in Las Vegas, a room where white-hat hackers could tinker with voting machines and mock voter registration databases, was a high-profile test of that collaboration. “I’m here to learn,” Alex Padilla, California’s secretary of state, said before touring the village in the bowels of Caesars Palace hotel and casino. That mindset is important as state and local officials ramp up resources toward securing election infrastructure three months before the midterm elections. In advance of the 2016 presidential election, Russian hackers probed the IT systems of 21 states, and U.S. officials have […]

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Newsmaker Interview: Theresa Payton on Russians and Election Meddling

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Threatpost sat down with Payton to discuss ongoing concerns around the security of the upcoming election cycle, where the weak links are and the Russian playbook. Continue reading Newsmaker Interview: Theresa Payton on Russians and Election Meddling→

South Carolina voters sue state over paperless voting machines

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South Carolina voters are suing their state over its use of paperless voting machines amid worries that they are susceptible to hacking without detection. The complaint filed Tuesday seeks a declaration from the court that South Carolina has violated the plaintiffs’ fundamental right to have their votes counted and prevent the state from continuing to use the machines it currently has in place. The lawsuit largely resembles one that is ongoing in Georgia. With the midterm elections coming up in November, the lawsuit does not outline any short-term alternatives to using the state’s current machines. The plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit propose using provisional paper ballots that can be scanned with the machines the state uses for absentee ballots. The plaintiffs are Frank Heindel, a commodities trader and election security advocate, and Phil Leventis, a former senator in the state legislature who opposed the the state’s adoption of the machines […]

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Senate report on Russian hacking highlights threats to election tech vendors

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Lawmakers are concerned about a major blind spot in the government’s ongoing effort to protect U.S. elections from hackers. Agencies like the Homeland Security Department have little insight into the cybersecurity practices of election technology vendors. This lack of visibility opens the door to supply chain attacks, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which could be otherwise potentially detected or stopped by government cybersecurity experts. The Senate committee’s first installment of a larger report on Russian targeting of the 2016 presidential election was released late Tuesday night. It focuses on assessing the federal government’s response to security threats and provides recommendations for future elections. Most of the infrastructure used to process votes today is comprised of equipment and software sold by private vendors. Government agencies are not allowed to enter and defend private computer networks unless they’re given direct consent, which in turn limits the defensive support options immediately available to the […]

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First-of-its-kind forum on election security gathers state and local officials with feds

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A top U.S. election official says that the allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election came with a silver lining: At least we’re now focusing on election security. Christy McCormick, a member of the Election Assistance Commission, told a crowd of state and local election officials from across the country on Wednesday that the events of 2016 jump-started a focus on election security that was not as prominent before. “I know that election officials have always focused on these problems to some degree. Not so laserly focused on election security but I think this has brought this to the forefront for us in the last couple of years. So if there’s a good consequence to what happened, that is one of them,” McCormick said Wednesday at a public forum the EAC hosted in Miami to allow the state and local officials to discuss their election security plans ahead of upcoming […]

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Pennsylvania moves to replace all paperless voting machines by 2020

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Pennsylvania says it will replace all voting machines that do not produce a paper record for each vote by 2020. Acting Pennsylvania Secretary of State Robert Torres instructed all counties on Thursday to put machines in place that have a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) by the end of 2019, and “preferably in place by the November 2019 general election,” according to a press release. “We want to bring about the system upgrades so Pennsylvania voters are voting on the most secure and auditable equipment as promptly and feasibly as possible, while also being supportive of the counties’ need to plan and budget for the new systems,” Torres said in a statement. Having a VVPAT means that even if a voter makes selections on an electronic ballot, they will be able to confirm their choices on a paper ballot that can be used in an audit. Election security experts have advocated […]

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Air gapping voting machines isn’t enough, says one election security expert

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The safeguards that election officials say protect voting machines from being hacked are not as effective as advertised, a leading election security expert says. U.S. elections, including national ones, are run by state and local offices. While that decentralization could serve an argument that elections are difficult to hack, University of Michigan Professor J. Alex Halderman says that it’s more like a double-edged sword. Speaking to an audience of students and faculty at the University of Maryland’s engineering school, Halderman said that the U.S. is unique in how elections are localized. States and counties choose the technology used to run federal elections. “Each state state running its own independent election system in many cases does provide a kind of defense. And that defense is that there is no single point nationally that you can try to attack or hack into in order to change the national results,” Halderman said. But […]

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Spooked by election hacking, states are moving to paper ballots

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Paper ballots may at first seem like an antiquated voting practice, but hacking fears are now pushing an increasing number of states toward a return to the basics. State legislatures and election directors are heeding warnings from Washington that hackers may tamper with electronic voting systems in the 2018 midterm elections. The U.S. intelligence community has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a campaign to interfere with the 2016 presidential election and that the Kremlin will try to do so again. On the national level, lawmakers have made several attempts to push legislation aiming to strengthen election cybersecurity through grants to upgrade equipment and to increase cooperation between the federal government and lower jurisdictions. So far, no such legislation has passed either house in Congress. Amid all this national attention, a number of states have started to act on their own bolster the integrity of elections they run. With these […]

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Voting Machines in ‘Murica

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We are less than nine months away from the 2018 national midterm elections and states and local municipalities are still scrambling to understand the threat to their infrastructure and to have in place the most secure voting methodologies. What is know… Continue reading Voting Machines in ‘Murica→