Vulnerabilities Found in Voting Machines, But Cannot be Fixed by November

Vote Voting Machine

Maybe we should go back to paper ballots. Just saying.

In Las Vegas, hackers attempted to access the voting machines we will use in November to identify any vulnerabilities.

Shouldn’t this have happened MONTHS ago? Because, uh, no one will likely fix the machines before November. From Politico:

In one sense, it’s the normal course of events: Every August, hackers at the DEF CON conference find security gaps in voting equipment, and every year the long and complex process of fixing them means nothing is implemented until the next electoral cycle.But Election Day security is under particular scrutiny in 2024. That’s both because of increasing worries that foreign adversaries will figure out how to breach machines, and because President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated allegations of widespread fraud in 2020 undermined confidence in the vote among his supporters.As a result, many in the election security community are bemoaning the fact that no system has been developed to roll out fixes faster and worrying that the security gaps that get identified this year will provide fodder for those who may want to question the results.“As far as time goes, it is hard to make any real, major, systemic changes, but especially 90 days out from the election,” said Catherine Terranova, one of the organizers of the DEF CON “Voting Village” hacking event. She argued that’s particularly troubling during “an election year like this.”

The hackers tried to bypass firewalls and security measures in the machines to access voters’ identities and count ballots.

Of course, Politico has to mention RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA! No one can accept the fact that no one likes Hillary Clinton. Blech.

“If you don’t think this kind of place is running 24/7 in China, Russia, you’re kidding yourselves,” said Voting Village co-founder Harri Hursti. “We are here only for two and a half days, and we find stuff…it would be stupid to assume that the adversaries don’t have absolute access to everything.”

The hackers hate that it takes so long to fix the machines.

How about they ask officials to move the event up a few months?!

“There’s so much basic stuff that should be happening and is not happening, so yes I’m worried about things not being fixed, but they haven’t been fixed for a long time, and I’m also angry about it,” continued Hursti.

Again, paper ballots:

While there is a robust system in place for certifying voting systems, it’s a long one.“Even if you find a vulnerability next week in a piece of modern equipment that’s deployed in the field, there’s a challenge in getting the patch and getting the fix out to the state and local elections officials and onto the equipment before the November election,” said Scott Algeier, executive director of the Information Technology-Information Sharing and Analysis Center. The group serves as a way for companies in the IT space to share threat information.Algeier, who also runs the organization’s Elections Industry Special Interest Group, said the process involves getting sign off from the machine manufacturer, then getting the system recertified by relevant authorities, then going in and updating each device. This complex series of steps is complicated even more by most election machines behind locked down weeks in advance of the elections.“It’s not a 90-day fix, It’s not a Microsoft every Tuesday, issue your patch and everything works fine,” Algeier said. “It’s a pretty complicated process.”

Others suggested not relying on just one private conference. Instead, bring the vendors and hackers together “in a more formalized setting.”

It happened last year:

The Elections Industry-SIG hosted an event last year in Washington that did just that, and helped to build bridges between a typically suspicious industry and security researchers.“We want to build a program where we can work in partnership with the security researchers, under the principles of coordinated vulnerability disclosure,” Algeier said.Until then, for those who packed the Voting Village this weekend, with lines spilling out in the hallway, the event serves a higher purpose.“We may not be able to fix everything about our election system in the next 90 days, but we can start by getting some of our facts straight and by understanding how our election systems work,” Terranova said.

Again, just use paper ballots. In my technology law class, we learned it’s hard to keep systems updated because once you find a way to block a hacker, they almost immediately try to find another way into the system.

Do you know what foreigners cannot hack?

Paper and pen.

Tags: 2024 Presidential Election, Voter Fraud

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