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posted by janrinok on Sunday February 16 2020, @02:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the when-will-we-learn? dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Flaws in the blockchain app some states plan to use in the 2020 election allow bad actors to alter or cancel someone’s vote or expose their private info.

Security researchers have found key flaws in a mobile voting app that some states plan to use in the 2020 election that can allow hackers to launch both client- and server-side attacks that can easily manipulate or even delete someone’s vote, as well as prevent a reliable audit from taking place after the fact, they said.

A team of researchers at MIT released a security audit of Voatz—a blockchain app that already was used in a limited way for absentee-ballot voting in the 2018 mid-term elections—that they said bolsters the case for why internet voting is a bad idea and voting transparency is the only way to ensure legitimacy.

West Virginia was the first state to use Voatz, developed by a Boston-based company of the same name, in the mid-term election, marking the inaugural use of internet voting in a high-stakes federal election. The app primarily collected votes from absentee ballots of military service personnel stationed overseas. Other counties in Utah and Colorado also used the app last year in a limited way for municipal elections.

However, despite the company’s claim that the app has a number of security features that make it safe for such an auspicious use—including immutability via its use of a permissioned blockchain, end-to-end voting encryption, voter anonymity, device compromise detection, and a voter-verified audit trail–the MIT team found that any attacker that controls the user’s device through some very rudimentary flaws can brush aside these protections.

“We find that an attacker with root privileges on the device can disable all of Voatz’s host-based protections, and therefore stealthily control the user’s vote, expose her private ballot, and exfiltrate the user’s PIN and other data used to authenticate the server,” MIT researchers Michael A. Specter, James Koppe and Daniel Weitzner wrote in their paper (PDF), “The Ballot is Busted Before the Blockchain: A Security Analysis of Voatz, the First Internet Voting Application Used in U.S.Federal Elections.”

[...] One voting district in Washington state—Mason County–already has pulled its plans to use Voatz in November, according to the New York Times, while West Virginia is moving ahead with its plans to expand Voatz used to disabled voters, the paper reported.


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  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:35PM (6 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:35PM (#958896) Journal

    Actually, Hillary won the popular vote by a slim margin, but due to the vagueries of the way votes are counted, Trump won more electoral votes. Is that what you call an easy win? Note, no point in arguing those facts, it's a matter of public record.

    Also note, I'm not claiming Hillary to be some sort of shining beacon of hope or anything of the sort. Just that Trump's win is a far cry from a mandate. At best he has been damned by faint praise.

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  • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:44PM (5 children)

    by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:44PM (#958898) Journal

    Let's stop pretending please. Trump/Clinton was the 94.3% mandate... It doesn't get much bigger and swampier than that.

    --
    La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:59PM (4 children)

      by sjames (2882) on Sunday February 16 2020, @09:59PM (#958903) Journal

      Personally, I voted for Stein. Not that I expected her to win.

      Actually the election here went exactly as I expected. The district came up blue and the state came up red, so the electoral votes all went to Trump. The news coverage pretended nobody voted 3rd party at all.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by fustakrakich on Sunday February 16 2020, @10:21PM (2 children)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday February 16 2020, @10:21PM (#958913) Journal

        Actually the election here went exactly as I expected.

        I'm sure most people feel the same way, and yet they refuse to acknowledge why it happened. Instead they invent fairy tales of alien invaders and little green men. Sadly, it's working. But, there's always hope [youtu.be].

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @06:59PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @06:59PM (#959245)

          You're so dumb repeating the same shit with zero attention paid to the propaganda campaigns and likely voting machine hacks.

          There were a lot of idiot protest votes, a lot of simple idiot votes, and a good handful of racist votes. Sure. Keep telling yourself it is the other side that is out of touch. You have no responsibility to your country you selfish douche, nope, none at all. Blame everyone else, and stick your hesd in the sand about the very real problems.

          • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday February 17 2020, @09:27PM

            by fustakrakich (6150) on Monday February 17 2020, @09:27PM (#959294) Journal

            *sigh* Some day you will understand the written word..

            zero attention paid to the propaganda campaigns

            Exactly what you people are supposed to do since you are so easily influenced by them.

            The solution to the machine hacks is too obvious to mention again if you didn't hear it the first million times.

            I find your highly emotional pearl clutching most amusing, in a tragic sort of way. Lashing out is healthier than keeping it all bundled up inside of you, so, by all means... And do vote, for whatever you think is best

            --
            La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday February 17 2020, @01:42AM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Monday February 17 2020, @01:42AM (#958969) Journal

        I also voted for Stein, but in those few important states, 3rd party voters got plenty of media hate which only made me feel pride in my 3rd party voting siblings.