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Many of Georgia's new voting machines aren't working on primary day
Many voters are enduring long waits and some poll locations quickly ran out of provisional ballots.
HBO’s 'Kill Chain' doc highlights the flaws in US election machines
While COVID-19 might be putting just about everything else on hold, we're still marching towards a presidential election later this year. After the high-profile interference of 2016, election security and foreign meddling are still critical issues, but many states still aren't doing enough to ensure the integrity of the process. A documentary premiering tonight on HBO proves a sobering reminder of the fragility of America's voting infrastructure.
Judge orders Georgia to ditch 'vulnerable' voting machines by 2020
A federal judge has ordered Georgia to stop using its old, "vulnerable" paperless voting machines by next year. US District Court Judge Amy Totenberg will allow the state to use the machines for special and municipal elections in November, accepting an argument that it would be too disruptive to switch to paper ballots, but that'll be the last time they're used.
2018 in cybersecurity: Regrets, we have a few
This was the year security slips, privacy fails and outright stupidity went from bad to surreal. It was a year in which warnings went unheeded and companies lost whatever trust we gave them. It was a nesting doll of security disasters. A clown car of willful negligence. A long 12 months of totally unsexy, nonconsensual edge-play with our data.
Voting machines are still plagued with vulnerabilities as midterms loom
The Def Con Voting Village, which for two years in a row has let conference attendees try their hand at breaching voting machines, has released the report on this year's event. More than 30 voting machines and other pieces of election equipment were available this year and many of them are still used throughout the US. Troublingly, attendees uncovered multiple vulnerabilities, the number and severity of which the report described as "staggering." "What these vulnerabilities in this report and warnings from national security leaders tell us is that this is a severe national security threat," said Voting Village co-organizer Jake Braun.
Dozens of kids hack election site replicas in just minutes
The Def Con hacker conference has been demonstrating how vulnerable voting machines are to hacks through its Voting Village, wherein adults are given the chance to compromise various models of voting devices. But this year, Def Con also let kids get in on the game, opening up replicas of states' election websites to children aged eight to 16. The event, put on by r00tz Asylum and supported by the University of Chicago and the Democratic National Committee, showed just how vulnerable these sites are to attack.
Iraq reportedly ignored concerns over electronic voting machines
Iraq is learning first-hand about the potential pitfalls of electronic voting machines in the wake of its disputed May 12th national election. Reuters has discovered that the country's election commission ignored an audit board warning that the vote counting machines, provided by Miru Systems, were unsuitable and susceptible to tampering. The commission committed a "clear legal violation" by moving forward, according to the board.
Voting machine maker sold states systems with remote-access tools
Election Systems and Software (ES&S) has admitted that it sold election management systems which included remote-access software to multiple US states over six years. The company said in a letter to Sen. Ron Wyden it had included off-the-shelf pcAnywhere software on some machines, which it sold "to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," Motherboard reports.
Recommended Reading: Tim Cook on Apple's iPhone X, HomePod and more
Why Apple is the world's most innovative company Robert Safian, Fast Company Apple may be one of the biggest companies in the world, but it still doesn't open up often about how it operates. A few times a year though, we catch a glimpse. Fast Company caught up with CEO Tim Cook back in January to chat Apple's recent run of new gear in an interview that published this week.
Pennsylvania requires paper trail on all new voting machines
Pennsylvania has taken a leaf out of Virginia's book and is now looking to replace its obsolete and vulnerable voting machines with more secure ones. A new directive requires counties planning to replace their voting machines with new ones that have paper backups -- problem is, the state doesn't have the budget for them. Most of the 20,000 machines Pennsylvania has been using the past decade are purely digital, so the state will need around $60 million to replace them with systems that cost $3,000 each.
Voting-machine makers are already worried about Defcon
Last year, Defcon's Voting Village made headlines for uncovering massive security issues in America's electronic voting machines. Unsurprisingly, voting-machine makers are working to prevent a repeat performance at this year's show. According to Voting Village organizers, they're having a tough time getting their hands on machines for white-hat hackers to test at the next Defcon event in Las Vegas (held in August). That's because voting-machine makers are scrambling to get the machines off eBay and keep them out of the hands of the "good guy" hackers.
DefCon event shows how easy it is to hack voting systems
It's no secret that it's possible to hack voting systems. But how easy is it, really? Entirely too easy, if you ask researchers at this year's DefCon. They've posted a report detailing how voting machines from numerous vendors held up at the security conference, and... it's not good. Every device in DefCon's "Voting Machine Hacking Village" was compromised in some way, whether it was by exploiting network vulnerabilities or simple physical access.
Voting machine supplier exposes 1.8 million voter records
Cybersecurity firm UpGuard has discovered that personal information from over 1.8 million Chicago residents was unintentionally exposed by voting machine supplier Election Systems & Software (ES&S). The backup files of voter data were found on an Amazon Web Services device and weren't protected with a password.
Russian intelligence agents targeted US voting-software company
Russia's military intelligence agency infiltrated a US voting-software company and conducted a phishing campaign targeting more than 100 local elections officials, according to top-secret National Security Agency documents published by The Intercept. The cyberattacks occurred in the months and days before the US presidential election in November. The US intelligence community concluded in January that top Russian authorities directed a hacking campaign against the US election infrastructure, including launching cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and the staff of candidate Hillary Clinton. The NSA documents published today offer a glimpse into how Russia actually attempted to infiltrate US elections systems, and what kind of information agents were interested in manipulating. The report does not state whether these attacks directly affected the results of the election.
Should we be worried about election hacking?
When you know you're gonna lose, one surefire way to cast doubt on your loss is to say the whole thing was a setup. That's exactly what Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump did when he found out that he was trailing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by nine points in Pennsylvania last month. While campaigning in the state, he said that the only way he could lose Pennsylvania is through fraud -- as in, electronic voting machines that could be hacked.
Swing states don't want DHS to protect its voting machines
Some states' electronic voting machines are antiquated, insecure and vulnerable to potential attacks from hostile attackers. But despite this, states like Georgia and Pennsylvania would prefer to take the risk than allow the Department of Home Security anywhere near them. NextGov is reporting that those states have rejected an offer from DHS chief Jeh Johnson to inspect the equipment for ways in which hackers could rig the vote. It comes just days after Johnson openly mulled demarcating voting machines as critical infrastructure -- meaning that they'd be defended with the same ferocity as power stations.
The most dangerous voting machines in America are retired
After more than a decade of use and dozens of reported security problems, the Virginia Board of Elections voted to decommission the last of the 3,000 WINVote touchscreen voting machines being used in the state. The machines have experienced issues including crashes and shutdowns, votes being eliminated for no reason, an unsecured WiFi network and unpatched software. And yet, despite persistent reports of problems over the past decade, and similar voting systems being banned from Pennsylvania in 2007 and Mississippi in 2013, Virginia only began examining the flaws in the system after Governor Terry McAuliffe experienced issues first-hand while attempting to use one last November.
FTC appoints Ed Felten as agency's first Chief Technologist
It may come as a bit of a surprise to some considering that seemingly every company and government agency has one these days, but the Federal Trade Commission has never had a Chief Technologist. It's now finally filled that gap, however, and has appointed Edward W. Felten to the post. As you may be aware, Felten's a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton and the founding director of the university's Center for Information Technology, but he's probably best known for his efforts to expose problems with electronic voting machines, and for his vocal advocacy against DRM -- he also uses his Mii for his profile image on the Freedom to Tinker blog, so you know you're not exactly dealing with your usual government bureaucrat. Felten has actually already been serving as a part-time adviser to the FTC, and it seems like he'll now basically be continuing that role in a full-time capacity, with the FTC only saying that he will "advise the agency on evolving technology and policy issues."
E-voting whistleblower Hari Prasad arrested, taken to Mumbai for questioning
In America, when you demonstrate what a racket e-voting is, you get to play Pac-Man. In India? You just might get arrested. Security researcher Hari Prasad made waves earlier this month when he demonstrated how an e-voting machine might be compromised, live on national television. It is now being reported that police have taken Prasad into custody, ostensibly for the theft of the machine, although folks in the know are suggesting that a cover-up is in the works. For Prasad's part, he refuses to give up the source of the machine -- and has been taken by police to Mumbai (a fourteen hour drive) to undergo questioning. According to researcher Alex Halderman there are some 1.4 million e-voting machines in use in India, all of which the government keeps out of the hands of researchers on intellectual property grounds -- and all of which might be vulnerable to fraud. There's a brief discussion with Prasad after the break.
Diebold's e-voting machines violate GPL, good taste
Diebold just can't seem to keep its nose clean these days. The nation's largest manufacturer of ATMs admitted not too long ago what everybody already knew: that their e-voting machines were totally bunk. Apparently in the course of that investigation it emerged that the company also thought it would be a laugh to load the open source Ghostscript Postscript interpreter software into those faulty machines without releasing its changes or paying the proprietary usage license fee -- leading Aritex, its developer, to file a lawsuit. It doesn't really instill confidence any further to hear that our nation's terrible electronic voting machines are running on stolen software, guys -- and to be honest, we're kinda starting to wish you'd get out of the ATM business, too.
