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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
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!
Why wait the day of the vote when the machines are distributed everywhere? Why not do it two weeks prior when they are in some warehouse, or from an usb key when somebody plugs in to update, diagnostic or whatever?
It happened to the Iranians with their uranium centrifuges, it could happen to the Ohioans with their machines...