Category Archives: voting software

Backdoor discovered in Swiss voting system would have allowed hackers to alter votes

Posted on by

A team of cybersecurity researchers on Tuesday revealed technical flaws in the Swiss government’s electronic voting system that could enable outsiders to replace legitimate votes with fraudulent ones. The issue is related to the way Switzerland’s voting system receives and counts votes. Anyone familiar with the sequence of “shuffle proofs” — the cryptographic protocol the system relies on to verify votes — could manipulate ballots that would pass the system’s authentication test, according to a paper published by Sarah Jamie Lewis, Olivier Pereira and Vanessa Teague. Swiss Post, the country’s national postal service, which developed the system along with Scytyl, a Spanish company, said Tuesday the issue had been resolved. But researchers say this flaw personifies the kind of worst-case scenario election security experts have warned about as more governments move toward paperless voting. “This system as apparently been audited multiple times, and both Scytl and Swiss Post have not been […]

The post Backdoor discovered in Swiss voting system would have allowed hackers to alter votes appeared first on CyberScoop.

Continue reading Backdoor discovered in Swiss voting system would have allowed hackers to alter votes→

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

Posted on by

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 […]

The post First-of-its-kind forum on election security gathers state and local officials with feds appeared first on Cyberscoop.

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

Here’s how much money states will receive for election security upgrades

Posted on by

The Trump administration has told states exactly how much of a $380 million fund they will get to make their voting systems more cyber-secure ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The funding, made available through a $1.3 trillion omnibus package passed last week, is one of Congress’s first major steps to prevent a repeat of Russian hackers’ meddling in U.S. elections. The money can be used to upgrade state computer systems and offer cybersecurity training to election officials, among other things. California, Florida, New York and Texas together will get a quarter of the cash, with California leading the pack with about $35 million. A full breakdown of the funding can be found here. The money is a “breakthrough for election security and the health of our country’s democracy,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. Lawmakers hailed their slice of the pie. “This federal […]

The post Here’s how much money states will receive for election security upgrades appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Here’s how much money states will receive for election security upgrades→

Voting machine manufacturers pushed for cybersecurity information by Sen. Wyden

Posted on by

Sen. Ron Wyden continued his cybersecurity push on Tuesday, demanding information about security practices and independent audits from six of the largest voting machine vendors in the U.S. and two federal test laboratories. “As our election systems have come under unprecedented scrutiny, public faith in our electoral process at every level is more important than ever before,” the Oregon Democrat wrote to the companies and the labs, a day after urging the U.S. Supreme Court to improve its email encryption. “Ensuring that Americans can trust that election systems and infrastructure are secure is necessary to protecting confidence in our electoral process and democratic government,” he wrote. Wyden contacted Dominion Voting, Election Systems & Software, Five Cedars Group, Hart InterCivic, MicroVote and Unisyn Voting Solutions. The Department of Homeland Security assessed that Russian hackers targeted state election systems but several states dispute that claim. The hacking did not involve vote tallying, […]

The post Voting machine manufacturers pushed for cybersecurity information by Sen. Wyden appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading Voting machine manufacturers pushed for cybersecurity information by Sen. Wyden→

U.S. election software companies aren’t that worried about phishing emails

Posted on by

Although a recently leaked intelligence report suggested that Russian spies attempted to hack into at least one election software vendor, many of the industry’s top companies say they aren’t threatened by spear phishing emails. Prominent election software companies say that phishing emails do not present a pressing problem, even though a classified intelligence report recently published by The Intercept indicated that Russian military intelligence had previously targeted one such company. The report says Russia’s attempt to influence the U.S. voting process may have been more expansive, and revealed attempts to place malware on the computers of local government officials. Of 16 U.S. election software companies contacted by CyberScoop, four said that they had not received any phishing emails between August 2016 and June 2017, including Free & Fair, ClearBallot, Scytl and BPro Inc. Others, like Everyone Counts, reported receiving phishing emails but stressed the sufficiency of the security systems currently in place […]

The post U.S. election software companies aren’t that worried about phishing emails appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading U.S. election software companies aren’t that worried about phishing emails→