Securing Elections

guest · Sep 18, 2019

Check-in computers stolen in Atlanta hold statewide voter data
September 18, 2019
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--reg...-statewide-voter-data/0W40RoNQQ3maPRUt3KPYnL/

Two computers that are used to check in voters were stolen from a west Atlanta precinct hours before polls opened Tuesday for a city school board election.

Officials replaced the computers before voters arrived, and the election wasn’t disrupted, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
The express poll computers contain names, addresses, birth dates and driver’s license information for every voter in the state, said Richard Barron, Fulton County’s elections director.
The computers, which were in a locked and sealed case, haven’t been recovered.
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guest · Sep 20, 2019

Key Senate Panel Approves $250 Million for Election Security
September 20, 2019
https://www.securityweek.com/key-senate-panel-approves-250-million-election-security

The Kentucky Republican announced in a floor speech in advance of the Appropriations Committee vote that he would support the funding, which had bipartisan support on the funding panel.
The committee approved the money on a bipartisan voice vote. The panel’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy, said “funding election security grants is a matter of national security.” The House approved $600 million earlier this year, though there is considerable money left in the pipeline from earlier appropriations.
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Minimalist · Sep 20, 2019

Here are 3 areas where states need more money for election security

States need more money for election security and it’s not important where the money comes from.

That’s the message from the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s, who spoke to reporters at his agency’s cybersecurity summit in National Harbor, Md. Sept. 19.
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https://www.fifthdomain.com/civilia...states-need-more-money-for-election-security/

Minimalist · Sep 20, 2019

States Try to Stop Political Deepfake Videos

State lawmakers are increasingly focused on deceptively edited videos, a pervasive technology that advocates say has the potential to disrupt elections. But are bans constitutional?
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https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/09/states-try-stop-political-deepfake-videos/160033/

guest · Sep 21, 2019

Colorado the First State to Remove Bar Codes from Ballots
September 20, 2019
https://www.govtech.com/civic/Colorado-the-First-State-to-Remove-Bar-Codes-from-Ballots.html

Since learning the scope of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, state and federal officials have been vocal about the need to secure America’s next elections.

This week, Colorado took the lead as the first state to require all ballots to be tabulated using only the marked ovals, as opposed to QR (quick response) codes, or bar codes in which the voter’s choices are encoded. According to a news release from Secretary of State Jena Griswold, the use of ballot-marking devices had created a situation in which votes tabulated by QR codes could not be verified by the human eye.

“It’s more of a forward-looking measure … We believe we should be doing everything we can to make sure our elections are safe and secure, and of course increase voter confidence, which we believe this also does,” she said.
Election security advocates are vocal about the need for an auditable paper trail, but some are wary of seeking too much involvement from technology vendors.
“There has been this pressure. A lot of the vendors like to encourage all voters to go on a ballot-marking device, and those states like Georgia, which previously had all paperless voting machines, made a decision to move to paper. [...]"
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Minimalist · Sep 22, 2019

Digital threats multiply ahead of 2020 US elections

It could be a manipulated video embarrassing a candidate. Or a computer voting system locked by ransomware. Or doubts about electronic voting machines with no paper backups.

As Americans prepare for 2020 elections, digital threats to election security are multiplying, stoking fears of a tainted outcome.
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https://techxplore.com/news/2019-09-digital-threats-elections.html

guest · Sep 23, 2019

Digvijaya asks EC to invite hackers to prove EVMs aren't tamper proof
September 23, 2019
https://www.aninews.in/news/nationa...-prove-evms-arent-tamper-proof20190923085656/

The row over the use of EVMs for elections continues as former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Monday asked the Election Commission of India to invite hackers and allow them to prove that 'no machine with a chip is tamper proof.

"Would Central Election Commission have the courage to invite the best Hackers and give them physical access to the machine and allow them to prove that no machine with a chip is Tamper Proof?" he tweeted.
Several political parties have raised objections over EVMs use contending that the machine can be hacked.
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hawki · Sep 23, 2019

"Microsoft will extend free Windows 7 security updates to voting systems in 2020..."

https://www.onmsft.com/news/microso...-7-security-updates-to-voting-systems-in-2020

guest · Sep 23, 2019

Voting equipment vendors seek info on vulnerability disclosure program
September 23, 2019
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/sec...eek-info-on-vulnerability-disclosure-program/

The nation’s top voting equipment vendors reportedly are issuing a request for information (RFI) this week on building a vulnerability disclosure program (VDP) to bolster election security.

Noting vulnerability disclosure is critical to finding and fixing software bugs, Casey Ellis, CTO and founder of Bugcrowd, said, “In a climate where most voters share the concern about cyber-interference with the election process, but very few know what that actually means, a clear and decisive move toward transparency by the vendors addresses the bigger vulnerability that’s in play here: Confidence in the democratic process itself.”

“My strong recommendation to election software vendors is to adopt a public vulnerability disclosure program (VDP), and not just engage a vetted group of individuals to find these issues.”
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Minimalist · Sep 24, 2019

Microsoft posts code for election security software

Microsoft publicly released the code for its election security software ElectionGuard on Tuesday, via the code collaboration site GitHub.
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https://www.axios.com/microsoft-election-security-software-5922033e-b71d-42a6-88ec-9df8667233e8.html

guest · Sep 24, 2019

Facebook says it won't fact-check politicians' posts
September 24, 2019
https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-says-it-wont-fact-check-politicians-posts/

Facebook said Tuesday that its efforts to reduce false news and misinformation on the platform don't apply to politicians. The company said it exempts politicians from its third-party fact-checking process and that that's been the policy for more than a year.

"From now on we will treat speech from politicians as newsworthy content that should, as a general rule, be seen and heard," Nick Clegg said in a post that included the full text of his speech.
"We don't believe ... that it's an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician's speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny," he said.
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Facebook: Facebook, Elections and Political Speech

guest · Sep 26, 2019

Facebook unfurls new measures in Singapore to curb elections interference
September 26, 2019
https://www.zdnet.com/article/faceb...-in-singapore-to-curb-elections-interference/

"Advertisers running campaigns on social issues, elections, and politics on Facebook in Singapore now will have to confirm their identity and location, and reveal who is responsible for the ads. The social media giant says the move is part of efforts to stem the spread of "misinformation" and help block foreign interference in local elections.
Its announcement on Wednesday came amidst calls from Singapore's Minister for Law and Home Affairs K. Shanmugam for regulations to deal with "hostile information campaigns".

He added that some of such initiatives had targeted specifically at influencing the outcome of elections, or national referendums.
On how this challenge should be addressed, Shanmugam noted that while some technology vendors had suggested self-regulation, he questioned whether this was adequate in the absence of legislation. "I think the clear answer is, no," he said.
[7quote]
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guest · Sep 27, 2019

Researchers Assembled over 100 Voting Machines. Hackers Broke into Every Single One
September 27, 2019
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/defcon-2019-hacking-village/

A report issued Thursday by some of the country’s leading election security experts found that voting machines used in dozens of state remain vulnerable to hacks and manipulations, warning that that without continued efforts to increase funding, upgrade technology, and adopt of voter-marked paper ballot systems, “we fear that the 2020 presidential elections will realize the worst fears only hinted at during the 2016 elections: insecure, attacked, and ultimately distrusted.”

The 47-page report is the product of researchers who organized a shakedown of voting machines at the annual DefCon conference, one of world’s biggest information security gatherings frequented by hackers, government officials, and industry workers.
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guest · Sep 30, 2019

Minnesota Guard's coders, hackers might help shore up election defenses
September 29, 2019
http://www.startribune.com/election...-minnesota-national-guard-for-help/561729312/

Minnesota election officials working to beef up the state’s cyber defenses against hackers now want to call in the National Guard.

In an effort to protect the 2020 election just months before early primary voting starts, Secretary of State Steve Simon said he wants to formalize a long-term agreement to work with a new “cyber protection team” developed by the Minnesota National Guard ahead of a workshop planned this week in St. Paul as part of a national “policy academy” on election security.

“This is a security issue,” Simon said. “It isn’t just about bullets or boots on the ground, it’s about this cyber realm and the fact that adversaries try to expose or exploit weaknesses in the cyber world just as they would in other areas as well.”
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guest · Oct 2, 2019

FBI called in to investigate 2018 Mountain State mobile voting system hacking
'West Virginia, mobile ballots, country votes, nearly pwned'
October 2, 2019
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/02/west_virginia_election_hacking/

The state of West Virginia says someone attempted to hack its citizens' votes during the 2018 mid-term elections.

A statement issued this week by US Attorney Mike Stuart of the Southern District of West Virginia revealed that the FBI has been called in and is actively investigating at least one attempt to tamper with election results.

"My office instituted an investigation to determine the facts and whether any federal laws were violated. The FBI has led that investigation," Stuart said.
According to the US attorney, the unknown hacker, only referred to as an 'outside party' tried (and failed) to get access to the mobile voting system the state used for military service members stationed overseas.
"Sadly, the challenge and threat isn’t only foreign interference but, rather, institutions, interest groups, third parties and trouble makers that seek to test or challenge or ultimately undermine the legitimacy of our elections and, as a result, our governing institutions and our government."
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DoJ: United States Attorney Mike Stuart Issues Statement on Election Security

guest · Oct 4, 2019

Microsoft: U.S. presidential campaign, government officials targeted by recent hacking effort
October 4, 2019
https://www.cyberscoop.com/iran-microsoft-2020-elections/

Microsoft said Friday that an Iranian-government-linked hacking group had targeted email accounts associated with an unnamed U.S. presidential campaign along with current and former U.S. government officials.
The Iranian hackers’ other targets included “journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran,” said Tom Burt, a corporate vice president at Microsoft.

Four accounts were compromised as a result of the attempts. None of those accounts were associated with the U.S. presidential campaign or current and former U.S. government officials, according to Microsoft. The company is working with the affected customers to secure their accounts, Burt said.
The DNC reiterated that Microsoft had seen the hacking group circumvent two-factor authentication in some cases, and urged campaigns to review a security check list the DNC previously released.
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Microsoft: Recent cyberattacks require us all to be vigilant

Today we’re sharing that we’ve recently seen significant cyber activity by a threat group we call Phosphorous, which we believe originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.
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guest · Oct 4, 2019

Exclusive: Trump campaign targeted by Iran-linked hackers - sources
October 4, 2019
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-c...linked-hackers-sources-idUKKBN1WJ2AD?rpc=401&

A hacking group that appears to be linked to the Iranian government attempted to break into President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, but did not succeed, sources familiar with the operation said on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Microsoft Corp said that an unnamed presidential campaign was targeted by hackers, which the software company linked to Iran.
The Trump campaign’s Director of Communications Tim Murtaugh said, “We have no indication that any of our campaign infrastructure was targeted.”
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CNBC:

Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request to confirm that the hacking group targeted the Trump campaign.
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guest · Oct 8, 2019

Presidential campaign websites fail at privacy, new study shows
October 8, 2019
https://www.csoonline.com/article/3...websites-fail-at-privacy-new-study-shows.html

Presidential campaign websites get a failing grade for privacy, according to a new study by the non-partisan Online Trust Alliance, an initiative of the Internet Society.

The study analyzed campaign websites of 23 presidential campaigns websites, including 19 Democrat and four Republican, for correct Transport Layer Security (TLS) deployment, Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) for campaign email, domain locking, as well as privacy policies and data sharing practices.

"Overall, we found that campaigns have strong website security, reasonable email and domain protections, and poor privacy scores," the report concludes. "Privacy statements are the biggest concern, causing failure for 70% of the campaigns."
Presidential campaigns should consider developing privacy best practices and agree to follow them, the report suggests. Campaigning maybe a cutthroat affair, but while candidates may come and go, political parties remain. The onus is on them to push campaigns to stick to better privacy norms or face the consequences.
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Internet Society: Online Trust Audit – 2020 U.S. Presidential Campaigns

guest · Oct 10, 2019

Dems’ SHIELD Act would protect elections, close loopholes on foreign spending
October 11, 2019
https://www.scmagazine.com/home/sec...lections-close-loopholes-on-foreign-spending/

Legislation introduced by House Democrats aims to close loopholes on foreign spending in the U.S. political campaigns to curb election interference.
In addition to addressing campaign finance loopholes, the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, introduced by Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chairperson of the Committee on House Administration, includes a duty to report any illicit offers by foreign governments and their agents to assist campaigns and bolsters the transparency of online political ads.

The legislation also puts restrictions on the information that candidates and foreign entities can share and bans deceptive practices in regard to voting procedures.
Foreign interference in elections grabbed the spotlight in the 2016 presidential campaign when Russia sought to influence the outcome by smearing Hillary Clinton and bolster Trump.
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hawki · Oct 15, 2019

"How Amazon.com moved into the business of U.S. elections

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s cloud computing arm is making an aggressive push into one of the most sensitive technology sectors: U.S. elections...

More than 40 states now use one or more of Amazon’s election offerings,..

So do America’s two main political parties, the Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and the U.S. federal body charged with administering and enforcing federal campaign finance laws...

While it does not handle voting on election day, AWS - along with a broad network of partners - now runs state and county election websites, stores voter registration rolls and ballot data, facilitates overseas voting by military personnel and helps provide live election-night results,.."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...o-the-business-of-u-s-elections-idUSKBN1WU173

guest · Oct 16, 2019

Election Security Experts Testify From Illinois, a Top Target of Russia's 2016 Meddling
October 15, 2019
https://gizmodo.com/election-security-experts-testify-from-illinois-a-top-1839069098

In an effort to broaden the public’s understanding of the challenges faced by local officials ahead of the 2020 election, Democratic lawmakers traveled to Gurnee, Illinois, on Tuesday to hear testimony from leading election and cybersecurity officials. The meeting also served as an opportunity for the Democrats to continue their push for legislation they say is pivotal to staving off additional election-meddling efforts by foreign adversaries such as Russia.

Illinois has invested over $13 million in federal grants to strengthen its systems since the breach, with half going toward the creation of the Illinois Cyber Navigator Program.
However, critics say the amount falls far short of what’s necessary for comprehensive improvements.
“In short, we know what we need to do to harden our infrastructure, but we’re lacking in leadership and funding.”
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guest · Oct 16, 2019

Domain Typosquatters Target the 2020 Presidential Election
October 16, 2019
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...atters-target-the-2020-presidential-election/

With a large playing field of candidates for the upcoming 2020 United States presidential election, political campaigns and scammers are capitalizing on searchers mistypeing a candidate's name in order to bring them to sites they weren't expecting.
We want your vote click!
In a new report by cybersecurity firm Digital Shadows, researchers have analyzed over 550 typosquats for the 34 candidates and election-related domains and put them into one of the three categories; misconfigured or illegitimate sites, non-malicious, or redirects.

"Altogether, we detected over 550 typosquats for the 34 candidate- and election-related domains we gathered from open-source research," Digital Shadows explained in their report. "Not every single one was something interesting; most of the time the typosquatted domain was simply parked and not hosting content. Still, there were some worthwhile areas to dig into deeper."
For the voters and web users, Digital Shadows recommends that instead of clicking through to a candidates site from emails or third-party posts, they should instead go to a candidate's social sites to determine their real site address.
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Digital Shadows: Typosquatting and the 2020 U.S. Presidential election: Cyberspace as the new political battleground

guest · Oct 18, 2019

Microsoft to Reward Hackers for Finding Bugs in Open Source Election Software
October 18, 2019
https://thehackernews.com/2019/10/election-software-hacking.html

Fair elections are the lifelines of democracy, but in recent years election hacking has become a hot topic worldwide.

To make a balance between transparency and security, in May 2019, Microsoft released a free, open-source software development kit (SDK) called ElectionGuard that aims to enable end-to-end verification of voting.
Microsoft's ElectionGuard SDK can be integrated into voting systems and has been designed to "enable end-to-end verification of elections, open results to third-party organizations for secure validation, and allow individual voters to confirm their votes were correctly counted."
ElectionGuard Bug Bounty Program
Since no software comes bugs-free, Microsoft today finally launched the ElectionGuard Bounty program, inviting security researchers from across the world to help the company discover high impact vulnerabilities in the ElectionGuard SDK.

"The ElectionGuard Bounty program invites security researchers to partner with Microsoft to secure ElectionGuard users, and is a part of Microsoft's broader commitment to preserving and protecting electoral processes under the Defending Democracy Program," the company says in a blog post published today.
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Microsoft: Introducing the ElectionGuard Bounty program

guest · Oct 20, 2019

NCP wants Net ban in 3-kilometre radius of booths
October 21, 2019
https://www.asianage.com/metros/mumbai/211019/ncp-wants-net-ban-in-3-kilometre-radius-of-booths.html

Mumbai: The Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has written to chief electoral officer Baldev Singh demanding a ban on Internet services within a three-kilometre radius of every polling booth and strong room until the end of counting process.

“There is suspicion among the people of Maharashtra that Electorinic Voting Machines (EVMs) and Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPATs) can be hacked and that the votes go in favour of candidates whom they did not vote for. Hacking is possible and can be done by professional hackers using mobile Internet. [...] The Internet service should be stopped from the time voting begins (October 21), until the end of the counting process (October 24),” the letter read.
However, Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dilip Shinde denied any plan to ban internet services. “There is no need for banning internet as the EVMs are standalone machines and can’t be tampered,” he said.
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guest · Oct 21, 2019

Election Hacks Can Legally Be Concealed
October 21, 2019
https://www.courthousenews.com/election-hacks-can-legally-be-concealed/

If the FBI discovers that foreign hackers have infiltrated the networks of your county election office, you may not find out about it until after voting is over. And your governor and other state officials may be kept in the dark, too.

There’s no federal law compelling state and local governments to share information when an electoral system is hacked. And a federal policy keeps details secret by shielding the identity of all cyber victims regardless of whether election systems are involved.
Election officials are in a difficult spot [...] They must balance the need for openness with worries over undermining any criminal investigation. And they want to avoid chaos or confusion, the kind of disruption that hackers want.

In general, it’s up to electoral agencies to disclose when they’ve been hacked. That, plus the federal policy protecting the identity of cyber victims, could mean that state election officials might not be told immediately if one of their election offices experiences a breach. In addition, the whole situation could be considered classified as part of a federal investigation.
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