Securing Elections

Minimalist · Apr 21, 2018

Elections serve two purposes. The first, and obvious, purpose is to accurately choose the winner. But the second is equally important: to convince the loser. To the extent that an election system is not transparently and auditably accurate, it fails in that second purpose. Our election systems are failing, and we need to fix them.

Today, we conduct our elections on computers. Our registration lists are in computer databases. We vote on computerized voting machines. And our tabulation and reporting is done on computers. We do this for a lot of good reasons, but a side effect is that elections now have all the insecurities inherent in computers. The only way to reliably protect elections from both malice and accident is to use something that is not hackable or unreliable at scale; the best way to do that is to back up as much of the system as possible with paper.
Click to expand...

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_electi_1.html

mood · May 31, 2018

N.Y. State, DHS to practice to protect election process
May 31, 2018
https://www.scmagazine.com/ny-state-dhs-to-practice-to-protect-election-process/article/769936/

New York State, in conjunction with the federal government, plans to hold drills during the weeks preceding the primary elections to help prevent any cyber intrusion into the electoral process.

The regional tabletop exercises will cover all of New York's county election jurisdictions and while basically, similar each will take into consideration local needs. The scenarios covered include manipulation of the election process through social media, dealing with a ransomware attack and the possible exploitation of board of election computer networks.

“These exercises in partnership with state and federal agencies will provide the needed training to identify and address potential incidents of cybersecurity when it comes to our electoral process,” said Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul in a statement.
Click to expand...

mood · Aug 1, 2018

Microsoft AccountGuard Service Offers Protection for Political and Election Orgs
August 1, 2018
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...s-protection-for-political-and-election-orgs/

Microsoft has launched a pilot program aimed at providing cybersecurity protection for political campaigns and election authorities.

The pilot program —named AccountGuard— was launched at the end of July, Bleeping Computer has learned, and was set in motion for the 2018 US midterm elections.
Only political and election entities can sign up for protection
Microsoft is now running a website where participants in the 2018 US midterm elections can sign up for this increased protection.

With AccountGuard added to their account, Microsoft is providing custom notifications, but also "reactive remediation support through standard channel" and "prescriptive best-practice security guidance" to proactively prevent incidents.
Part of Microsoft's Defending Democracy Program
AccountGuard is a project of the Microsoft Defending Democracy Program, an initiative that Microsoft launched in mid-April to safeguard electoral processes.
Click to expand...

mood · Aug 10, 2018 at 7:37 PM

US officials hope hackers at Defcon find more voting machine problems
August 10, 2018
https://www.cnet.com/news/us-officials-hope-hackers-at-defcon-find-more-voting-machine-problems/

Hackers at the Defcon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas on Friday took on voting machines again, after showing how easy it was to break into election machines at last year's gathering. This time around, officials from the US Department of Homeland Security were on hand to learn directly from hackers who find problems with election security.

"It concerns us that many states still don't have concrete plans to upgrade their voting systems, and 14 states are struggling to replace outdated voting machines that lack paper trails before the next presidential election," Pence said.

Despite the voting machine vulnerabilities being exposed in Defcon, it's not clear whether the exercise will be able to help with the midterm elections in November. Braun said Defcon's report on the voting machines will publish in September, giving election officials two months to fix all the reported security issues.
Click to expand...

Krusty · Aug 11, 2018 at 5:52 AM

In November, Americans will go to the polls to vote in the crucial mid-term elections. But as intelligence chiefs in the country continue to warn of Russian interference, there is great concern about how vulnerable the US voting infrastructure could be to cyber-attack.

At the Def Con hacking conference in Las Vegas, our North America technology reporter Dave Lee met some children who were competing to hack replicas of the websites that will be used to show official voting results in November.
Click to expand...

Video:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-45154497/hacking-the-us-mid-terms-it-s-child-s-play

ronjor · Aug 12, 2018 at 6:46 PM

Kids are amazing.

Minimalist · Aug 13, 2018 at 10:38 AM

Voting Hacks Prompt Push Back from Election Officials, Vendors

LAS VEGAS – DEF CON 26, building on its work in hacking ballot machines last year, saw three days of probing into various aspects of the end-to-end voting infrastructure in place in the U.S., including a voter registration database and election reporting websites. Several vulnerabilities and exploits came to the fore – prompting push-back from a voting machine vendor and secretaries of state, just as the U.S. prepares for the midterm elections.
Click to expand...

https://threatpost.com/def-con-2018-voting-hacks-prompt-push-back-from-election-officials-vendors/

mood · Aug 14, 2018 at 6:21 AM

Election systems should be considered critical infrastructure
August 13, 2018
https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/08/13/election-systems-critical-infrastructure/

93 percent of security professionals are concerned about cyber-attacks targeting election infrastructure and data, and 81 percent believe cyber criminals will target election data as it is transmitted by machines, software and hardware applications, from local polling stations to central aggregation points, a recent study by Venafi has revealed.

“Security professionals clearly think that machine-to-machine communication in the electoral process is a high value asset for attackers targeting election results,” said Kevin Bocek, vice president of security strategy and threat intelligence for Venafi.

“This is just one reason why governments around the world need to make the security of all encrypted, machine-to-machine communication their top concern.”
Click to expand...

mood · Aug 15, 2018 at 9:30 PM

McAfee offers state election officials a year of free cloud security tools
August 15, 2018
https://www.cyberscoop.com/mcafee-election-security-cloud-tools/?category_news=technology

McAfee is offering free security services to election offices in all 50 states, the company announced on Wednesday, in order to protect voter data stored in the cloud.

The product, McAfee Skyhigh Security Cloud, provides monitoring and threat detection tools for cloud software-as-a-service products (such as Microsoft Office 365, Box, Amazon Web Services and others), which are widely used by enterprises including state election offices.

“We believe the McAfee Cloud for Secure Elections Program will fill a foundational security requirement for cloud by protecting against intrusion from those who aim to tamper with the United States elections,” said Ken Kartsen, McAfee’s vice president of public sector sales, in a press release.
Click to expand...

Log in or Sign up

Securing Elections

Minimalist Registered Member

mood Updates Team

mood Updates Team

mood Updates Team

Krusty Registered Member

ronjor Global Moderator

Minimalist Registered Member

mood Updates Team

mood Updates Team

Security Standing Committee to secure the future of computing

Knox County Tennessee Election Site Hit With DDOS Attack During Primary

"Don’t Mess With Our Elections": Vigilante Hackers Strike Russia, Iran

Hackers penetrate voting machines used in 2016 election at SLC cybersecurity conference

speed over security

Log in or Sign up

Securing Elections

Minimalist Registered Member

mood Updates Team

mood Updates Team

mood Updates Team

Krusty Registered Member

ronjor Global Moderator

Minimalist Registered Member

mood Updates Team

mood Updates Team

Security Standing Committee to secure the future of computing

Knox County Tennessee Election Site Hit With DDOS Attack During Primary

"Don’t Mess With Our Elections": Vigilante Hackers Strike Russia, Iran

Hackers penetrate voting machines used in 2016 election at SLC cybersecurity conference

speed over security

Useful Searches