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Senators Demand Voting Machine Vendor Explain Why It Dismisses Researchers Prodding Its Devices (bleepingcomputer.com)
Four US senators, members of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter on Wednesday to Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the largest voting machine vendor in the US, asking for clarifications on why the vendor is trying to discourage independent security reviews of its products. From a report: The four senators who signed the letter are Kamala D. Harris (D-CA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Susan Collins (R-ME), and James Lankford (R-OK). The senators sent the letter to ES&S following the conclusion of the Voting Village at the DEF CON 26 security conference held in Las Vegas at the start of the month, where security researchers found several security vulnerabilities in the company's products. "We are disheartened that ES&S chose to dismiss these demonstrations as unrealistic and that your company is not supportive of independent testing," the letter reads. "Many of the world's leading electronics and software companies have opened their arms to the research community, maintaining active presences at the largest security research conferences and inviting 'white hat' hackers to probe their products to identify how they can improve product security," the letter continued. At DEF CON, security researchers found vulnerabilities in the voting machines of other vendors. Only ES&S is mentioned in the senators' letter because of the company's dismissive approach to external security research.
Fruit machines in casinos have to be state certified as honest with their code vetted regularly. Voting machines are largely unregulated.
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
just a guess.
Based off of this line from their website:
"We hold ourselves to a higher standard, knowing that our products and services help maintain democracy in the jurisdictions we service."
I flat out told them I hope I never see their equipment in use when I vote, and if I do I'll demand a paper ballot. I also stated I'll be writing my state representative demanding this company's products NOT be used in my state until their atitude towards security changes in such a way as to support the security minded folks.
How back in the early 2000s here on Slashdot we all were complaining how these electronic voting machines were the work of the devil in how easy they were to hack?
Fast forward to 2018, they're now viewed as Russian hacking devices.
Seems like we're on a collision course to return to the old style paper ballots.
Shame no one listens to us. It seems most tech crises would be avoided! Thankfully we get to bill $300/hr when Mr. Executive's screw up comes to roost!
You effectively hold the purse, Senator. Advise your state level officials not to contract with ES&S if they are dismissive.
We've given Trump blind tax-free trust this whole time, and at no time has he viola... oh.
Perhaps they don't care because they're being paid not to care?
I think perhaps these companies need to be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime DUMP THEM and go back to tried-and-true methods.
Unless you've spent time running an election, it's hard to appreciate just how distributed the process is. Virginia, where I am an officer, has 2,400+ separate voting precincts.
None of our voting equipment is networked, not even locally within the precinct. None of the equipment even have the hardware necessary to be networked.
Nearly 4 million people voted in the last Presidential race. The recount margin is 1%, so the winner and the loser must be within 1% of each other for a recount to be called.
Thus for a hack to be effective and not be scrutinized by a recount, you'd have to win 1% of 4 million, or 40,000 votes.
How likely is it that you will be able to hack your way into enough precincts, defeat the chain of custody, get your hands on the machines to do your dirty work -- UNDETECTED -- for EACH and every election (each election has a different ballot, and the order is chosen randomly), and change 40,000 votes? Otherwise, what would be the point of the attack?
Local elections are secure, disconnected facilities. Anytime I see some hacker "fair" where they've got the covers off and people are probing the equipment, I just laugh. As if. We run a tight ship, and in 238 years of doing this job, we've learned a thing or two about how people try to cheat.
It's not VOTING you have to worry about, it's REGISTRATION. Registration has many times more attack vectors.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
There's a limited number of people that are going to be at any single voting station, so manual counts of paper ballots wouldn't take that long, happening in parallel all over the country. The ballots can even be kept for a little while, in case recounts are necessary.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
and losing elections. It's one thing when that happens with the presidency. Our electoral college was designed to do exactly that. But they've lost the House two or three times now but won more votes. I want to see stuff like this because if nothing else I want to see an end to our sham Democracy. Maybe if enough people recognize there's a problem we'll start seeing changes.
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I would be happy to answer that right after you explain why you and your colleagues have been ignoring everyone and their fucking brother telling you your electronic voting machines are susceptible to manipulation for the past GD decade or more.
NOW it's a big deal ? :facepalm:
If you're promising an election to a group the majority will vote against, and you want plausible deniability in the form of external foreign agents changing the numbers, security in your paperless Accuvote-TS models is the LAST thing you want to focus on, but outright admitting that would probably have your family shot for treason (and rightly so). Well, second-to-last. Paper Ballots would kill your plan quite hard.
So you do what the party you're helping always does: You deny there's anything wrong, try to have the whistleblowers jailed, and pretend the GRU could never get into the systems it controls.
Kamala D. Harris is a horrible legislator and I'm embarrassed to have her a senator from California. But, like a broken clock, she is right every once in a while. Unfortunately, the clock is right probably 729 times more per year than her.
I will post this. It should be mandatory viewing.
Why electronic voting is a terrible idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
Let's be fair: She's just looking for publicity,and can probably play it up as a money move to get donations from the tech firms.