Bruce Schneier: Our Election Systems Must Be Secured If We Want To Stop Foreign Hackers (schneier.com)

Okian Warrior writes: Bruce Schneier notes that state actors are hacking our political system computers, intending to influence the results. For example, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind the release of DNC emails before the party convention, and WikiLeaks is promising more leaked dirt on Hillary Clinton. He points out, quite rightly, that the U.S. needs to secure its electronic voting machines, and we need to do it in a hurry lest outside interests hack the results. From the article: "Over the years, more and more states have moved to electronic voting machines and have flirted with internet voting. These systems are insecure and vulnerable to attack. But while computer security experts like me have sounded the alarm for many years, states have largely ignored the threat, and the machine manufacturers have thrown up enough obfuscating babble that election officials are largely mollified. We no longer have time for that. We must ignore the machine manufacturers' spurious claims of security, create tiger teams to test the machines' and systems' resistance to attack, drastically increase their cyber-defenses and take them offline if we can't guarantee their security online."

Comments

Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

For something as important as voting, how about paper only? And another thing, we should really do vote-by-mail nationwide just like Washington state does it.

Re:Better idea

[Rockoon]

This. Paper ballots. Number 2 pencil. No chads.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Then whoever controls 51% of the mining, controls the election. I dont see how this is a good idea.

Re:Better idea

[CastrTroy]

The fear is that someone might swap out the pen for one with disappearing ink. That's why pencil is used.

Hell, we're not even allowed to verify *WHO* votes

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. We're not allowed to require voters to produce identification.

"But there's no vote fraud!!!!"

HOW THE HELL CAN YOU EVEN KNOW IF THERE'S FRAUD WHEN YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO VERIFY WHO VOTES?!?!

The lack of positive voter identification means US elections don't meet UN standards for free and fair elections.

Remember when journalists dug for the truth?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> WikiLeaks is promising more leaked dirt on Hillary Clinton

Does anyone else remember when journalists actually did research like this? (In a free society, digging up "dirt" on politicians is a GOOD thing.) Where is the Watergate reporting crew when we need them?

Re:Lack of anonymity

[StillAnonymous]

You shouldn't be anonymous for the voting process, otherwise you'll get all kinds of shenanigans occurring. People voting twice, ineligible people voting, using someone else's vote, etc. Who you voted for is all that needs to be anonymous.

But it wasn't the russians who compromised your

[Punto]

it wasn't the russians who compromised your elections, it was one of the political parties, by sabotaging itself, and "the russians" (yet to be clear if it was actually the government) are the ones who exposed it. This is a pretty bizarre spin on the actual facts. If anything failed you, it was the FEC and the journalists whose job was to investigate and expose this, the foreign actors actually helped you out.