Report: Widely Used Election Machines 'Vulnerable to Cyberattack'

[DonViejo]

Source: The Daily Beast


Ballot-counting machines that are used in more than half of U.S. states are vulnerable to cyberattack because of a flaw that was disclosed more than 10 years ago, according to an alarming new report out Thursday. The Model 650 high-speed ballot-counting machine made by Election Systems & Software LLC, the nation’s leading manufacturer of election equipment, was reported for its flaw in a report by Ohio’s secretary of state in 2007. Harri Hursti, an election-security researcher who co-wrote both the Ohio report and new Def Con report, said: “There has been more than plenty of time to fix it.” The Model 650 is still being sold, but a company spokeswoman said it stopped manufacturing it in 2008. The company insists “the security protections on the M650 are strong enough to make it extraordinarily difficult to hack in a real-world environment.” The new report is being delivered Thursday to Capitol Hill.

READ IT AT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-widely-used-election-machines-vulnerable-to-cyberattack

[NickPeace]

1. It Should Be Legal To

Take a photo of your ballot. Just a thought

[unblock]

4. this doesn't really solve the problem and it creates new ones.

taking a photo doesn't really help because you can't know how my ballot was counted, so you can't know there was any problem.

what it does do is it lets me prove to others how i voted, which could lead to problems such as selling/buying votes or extorting votes (e.g., vote this way and bring me back proof or else i'll beat you).

[Achilleaze]

2. "Heh, heh." - KGOP republicans

[Maxheader]

3. Guess all the other influences we hear about..

foreign bots...rightwinger media lies..
are a moot point, if the ballot numbers
can be manipulated....In kansaas, brownbutts
2nd run for governor...The democrat had consistent
leads all through the campaign...and lost..Hillary
had significant and consistent numbers..and lost...

[FakeNoose]

13. Something similar happened in Kentucky

Mitch McConnell won re-election in 2014 by some kind of "minor miracle."
Not so miraculous since the GOP's buddies installed the voting machines.

[Botany]

5. Those were not flaws but backdoors programed into the system to allow data manipulation.

Last edited Thu Sep 27, 2018, 09:56 AM - Edit history (1)

n/t

[2naSalit]

6. Yup.

[Botany]

8. OH's Sec. of State @ the time Jennifer Brunner was behind the study on our voting machines

and it showed security flaws in every one of them. In many cases "back doors" were
programmed into the machines data analytics.

[lagomorph777]

7. +1.

[Botany]

9. OH's Sec. of State Brunner's Everest study.

http://siis.cse.psu.edu/everest.html

Ohio EVEREST Voting Study

On December 14th, 2007, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner released the results of a comprehensive review of her state's electronic voting technology. The study, called Project EVEREST, examined electronic voting systems – touch-screen and optical scan – from Elections Systems and Software (ES&S), Hart InterCivic, and Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold). As part of that study, three teams of security researchers, based at Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA), the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA), and WebWise Security, Inc. (Santa Barbara, CA), conducted the security reviews. The reviews began in September, 2007 and concluded on December 7, 2007 with the delivery of the final report. The teams had access to voting machines and software source code from the three vendors, and performed source code analysis and security penetration testing with the aim of identifying security problems that might affect the integrity of elections that use the equipment.

Our report is an extensive technical analysis of the security of these voting systems as they would be used under real-world election conditions. All of our findings are detailed in this public report. A confidential unredacted version of the report provides specific references to the vendors' proprietary source code, but offers no substantive additional technical insights. The full academic report can be found here. The team prepared the following statement about the report and its findings.

[brush]

10. Bingo. I'm sure that info was shared with repug operatives only.

[diva77]

11. K&R for exposure

[FakeNoose]

12. PAPER BALLOTS in every state - it's the only answer

These electronic voting machines need to be junked immediately. Total waste of money, paid out to GOP-supporting contractors. The machines cannot be fixed, they must be trashed.

When the Democrats are back, Paper Ballots must be Thing #1.

[LiberalLovinLug]

14. Democrats seem to be blithely unconcerned

Which is frustrating and puzzling.

"Paper ballots only!" Should have been one of their most repeated talking points for two years now.

It will make no difference how big the Blue Wave is when they have control of a giant drain plug.

We could lose, and it would be all withing acceptable margins. A few points difference. Just enough to avoid re-counts.

[FakeNoose]

15. Everything you say is true

... however they can only tip the scales when the vote counts are very close. It has to be a slim margin either way, they can go in a make a few quick changes to swing the county red. If the difference is more than .5% then it would get noticed quickly and even the Repugs are staying away from that. In 2016 they only pulled it off in backwater counties of mostly rural states.

Remember that gerrymandering is their friend - wherever they already have a comfortable margin of victory, no need to bother cheating on the vote tallies. I'm in Pennsylvania and we're pretty sure it happened here, there were some fishy last-minute jumps from blue to red and it was enough to swing the state.

People in Wisconsin and Michigan are saying the same thing. Hell it could have happened in a lot of states. The Repukes will never stop cheating, they just have to be caught and shut down.

[JonLP24]

16. K&R