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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @02:29AM
> Accepting the centralised organization's identity verification process as valid,
And that right there is why devlux is on a fool's errand. Not the part about accepting the validity, but the fact that his entire system relies on identity verification. You can not have both a secret ballot and a provably tamper-proof election. That's practically a fundamental law of information theory if not physics in general.
We get around that in real life by putting lots of friction in the parts of the process most vulnerable to deanonymizing ballots and tampering with votes. Its not perfect, but most of the time its good enough. Going electronic is all about taking the friction out of a system. So without the benefit of friction you are left with a choice - no more secret ballots or a totally hackable voting system.
Pick one.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 30 2016, @02:48AM
You could have a system where each voter gets a receipt with a code, and can verify their vote anonymously. They would only need to identify themselves if they wished to contest how their vote had been counted.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @03:08AM
> You could have a system where each voter gets a receipt with a code, and can verify their vote anonymously
No you could not. If you have a receipt with a code then you can be coerced into giving that receipt with a code to someone else and now your ballot is no longer anonymous.
Seriously this is an immutable law, you can not be simultaneously anonymous and verifiable. Any who thinks otherwise just has not thought it through.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:15AM
Since I have to show ID and prove who I am to be able to vote, I don't expect my vote to be anonymous in the first place.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:12AM
has this law been proven?
I would be interested in reading such a proof.
It is my understanding that it has only been postulated that e-votes can not be both anonymous and verifiable.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 30 2016, @12:18PM
Regardless of the voting system you could be coerced into revealing your vote.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday August 30 2016, @01:51PM
Once you've dropped the filled in ballot paper through the slot, you can say you voted whatever way they want. They can't check, and even if you wanted to, you couldn't prove which way you voted.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday August 30 2016, @03:22AM
You can not have both a secret ballot and a provably tamper-proof election. That's practically a fundamental law of information theory if not physics in general.
You can have a ballot that is secret unless you possess a given private key. This takes away all concerns about secrecy except for vote selling/coercing, and if you were being coerced into voting a certain way you could just find somebody voting the other way who was willing to let you decieve your aggressor with their private key. I would consider this a relatively minor problem compared to election fraud.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:24AM
> and if you were being coerced into voting a certain way you could just find somebody voting the other way who was willing to let you decieve your aggressor with their private key
Lol. Do you even think before posting?
(a) Not only is that not easy to do, it is illegal. If the solution to the problem is to break the law, then it's not an actual solution.
(b) Coercion isn't just about aggression, its also about bribes.
Designing voting systems is like designing encryption systems - if you aren't an expert then you will fuck it up royally. I've been part of verifiedvoting.org since their start back in 2003. You clearly haven't really given this much thought at all.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:54AM
I'm in agreement that your worries about anonymity are valid in the specific case of targeted coercion, and I think my last post makes that clear. I represented it as a minor issue, not a solved problem. It's not like the current system doesn't allow for make-shift evidence of ballots cast -- ballot selfies aren't even illegal in every state, and they're producable everywhere. You just don't have any gaurantees that the ballot in the selfie is actually counted.
The imperfect solution of supplying a false key is worth bringing up because it makes everything more difficult for the would-be ballot buyer; they can't ever really verify how somebody voted, only that a given key matched a given vote, so they incur more cost per vote actually bought. If they wanted greater assurance they'd need to go through the same hassle as today. The secrecy is more comparable to our current system than it is to voting in a place and time where votes were public knowledge.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:05AM
Here's what I actually overlooked until just now: absentee votes are super easy for a third party to confirm with cooperation from the voter, so targeted coercion is even easier than a selfie in the current system. This negates your whole argument unless you oppose absentee voting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:20AM
Yes there are anonymity problems with vote-by-mail and as more and more districts roll that out eventually somebody is going to start exploiting those problems. But at least they still have the friction of physical ballots so scaling the coercion isn't anywhere near as easy as with e-voting. You'd need someone to personally verify the ballot and mail it themselves to assure the coerced vote was actually cast.
Ballot selfies are not a problem because a photograph of a ballot before it is cast is not proof that it was cast.
And what you call a "minor issue" is anything but because, again, scaling. It is no great leap to automate a vote buying scheme where people message their "receipts" and get bitcoin in return. That's 1000x easier than dicking around with ballots in the mail.
And while I haven't mentioned this yet, secure e-voting is impossible too. You can't guarantee that the computer used to cast the vote isn't compromised in such a way that (a) it casts a different vote and (b) intercepts the "receipt" and give you a fake one. For example, everybody who thinks they voted for candidate X but their phone had a virus that voted for Y instead gets the same "receipt" from someone who really did vote for X.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:34AM
The whitepaper is actually an interesting read. We're talking about voting in a booth still.
If you were automatically paying anybody for keys that are tied to a specific vote, you're mostly going to be paying people who were going to vote that way regardless. Very cost prohibitive.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:51AM
I do see your point about taking a ballot selfie and then requesting a new ballot. I was trying to think of a clever way around it, but I haven't yet.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday August 30 2016, @06:59AM
Oh, wait, here's the clever solution: video transition from selfie to ballot dropping in hole, obviously. Hurpadurpa.
(Score: 2) by https on Tuesday August 30 2016, @04:20PM
You really, really, really should look at how elections are conducted in nations other than the USA.
I suspect that a major part of the problem is the sheer number of things that must be voted for simultaneously on Election Day - it's unnecessarily complex. You even have a particular day called Election Day. Weirdos.
Offended and laughing about it.