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In the run-up to the USA's upcoming national election event:
The FBI has uncovered evidence that foreign hackers penetrated two state election databases in recent weeks, prompting the bureau to warn election officials across the country to take new steps to enhance the security of their computer systems, according to federal and state law enforcement officials.
[...] [three days later] the FBI Cyber Division issued a potentially more disturbing warning, entitled "Targeting Activity Against State Board of Election Systems." The alert, labeled as restricted for "NEED TO KNOW recipients," disclosed that the bureau was investigating cyberintrusions against two state election websites this summer, including one that resulted in the "exfiltration," or theft, of voter registration data. "It was an eye opener," one senior law enforcement official said of the bureau's discovery of the intrusions. "We believe it's kind of serious, and we're investigating."
[...] six states and parts of four others (including large swaths of Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state in this year's race) are more vulnerable because they rely on paperless touchscreen voting, known as DREs or Direct-Recording Electronic voting machines, for which there are no paper ballot backups.
[...] the FBI warning seems likely to ramp up pressure on the Department of Homeland Security to formally designate state election systems as part of the nation's "critical infrastructure" requiring federal protection — a key step, advocates say, in forestalling the possibility of foreign government meddling in the election.
The reason designating election systems "critical infrastructure" requiring federal protection is important is that designation means the Feds devote resources to protecting it and threaten a heightened response to entities messing with "critical infrastructure."
[Continues...]
Related / more info:
- Cyber Storm V: Testing the Nation's Ability to Respond to Significant Cyber Incidents
- White House releases a cyber deterrence policy outlining how the United States will respond to cyber attacks from malicious actors.
- Text of the Cyber Deterrence Policy (PDF)
Have you considered the impact on the US if the election for president is disrupted, with the winner unknown because the results are dependent upon the votes in one or more of the states with electronic-only voting systems? Some people might find it beneficial if the US election is disrupted or contested.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Monday August 29 2016, @11:15PM
From my understanding of electronic votes is that they’re on standalone devices and collected and added to paper votes manually.
If I were to make a voting machine, it would have read only OS, probably dos, hooked up to a unique user input device, a 40" monitor, writes and mirrors to two rom chips located on a single pcb which contains voter id, vote which is the candidates first+last name, machine id, and timestamp all of which is enclosed into a cubicle.
The input device would have a lot of large toaster strudel sized buttons. Each of these buttons will have a candidates first name at the top, last at the bottom and photo of them in the middle. The first row of these buttons would be labeled president to the left and right of the button row and background colored red. Second row for state colored white, third for town colored blue. On screen there will be blank rows colored red, white and blue. Each time you click a button there would be an auditor ding, and reply of the candidates name you selected, probably voiced by john madden, and it would pop up the candidates name in the corresponding row. Once you have selected all three rows, madden will ask you to selected the candidates again to confirm your choice (text popup on screen too). Once you select the same three people again, madden will say you have successfully voted.
Once those pcbs are removed from the machine, both chips are signed in felt pen by two pollsters then are removed and each pollster takes one chip and reads it on another machine which checks voter ids against a voter list that was written/verified onto a rom before the election took place, then all verified votes are tallied and compaired.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday August 30 2016, @12:43AM
I like your line of thinking, but that is not paranoid enough.
My own comments [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:17AM
Computer prints ballot which has easily readable and OCR-able text. Voter folds that (maybe inserts in envelope), gets out of the closed cabin and puts the paper(s) in the box that is in the table controlled by other people.
Later open the box and count. Use a scanner if you want it fast, for example when voting many issues at the same time. No fucking chads, not fucking pencil marks. Humans and computers must agree about the contents of any randomly selected vote.
Basically what is done in many places, just with the extra of OCR+scan option added.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:20AM
That still allows the programmer to change the vote between the screen and the ROM, but only on the first Tuesday of November and when more than N people have voted at a certain pace during the day.
There is nothing safer than a bunch of single-choice papers in an envelope inside a transparent urn, with a crew of people who don't like each other keeping an eye on it and counting together until they agree.
A Spanish guy asked me today why Jury Duty is a mandatory thing, but not Election Day Auditor. It makes so much sense I should claim the idea.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by arslan on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:47AM
So, how practical is it to build in voter reconciliation into e-voting? On top of whatever mechanism in place, the e-vote is tagged with a one time UUID for the voter to either print out or write-down or take a photo with their mobile, etc.
A large query/read-only online database is then uploaded after tally to show what that UUID have its vote counted against and voters can login and validate it themselves... crowd source reconciliation.
Of course traceability and integrity between that and the actually tallying is very important. The database can also be bulk downloaded by any public or organization to recount themselves if they want or have the resource...