#BERKMAN KLEIN CENTER ELECTION SECURITY SOFTWARE#

The next election will be no more secure than this election.Status Casting (or just statcast or maybe even just РІР‚Сљscast!РІР‚Сњ) is the name I am giving to the act of using the built-in radio broadcasting capabilities of your mobile device, laptop, wifi router or other radio-enabledР’В device to broadcastР’В a short human-readable message up toР’В 10m to 100m away. 'Election officials are largely in denial. There are lots of vulnerabilities,' Schneier said. 'This (attack) feels more exploratory than operational, but this is just one piece. Greenhalgh said that even though most jurisdictions have paper ballots which can be used for recounts, 'the bad news is the vast majority of the country doesn't do an audit to catch any errors in the vote counting software.'Р”В«ruce Schneier, chief technology officer of IBM Resilient and a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, said the report shows the weaknesses of US election systems. 'Internet elections are even more hackable, and I'm glad we're not doing that,' Appel said.

Most US states now use optical scanners with paper ballots that can be audited, but a handful employ paperless systems with no paper trail to verify the count.

#BERKMAN KLEIN CENTER ELECTION SECURITY SOFTWARE#

'And it's many weeks now before the next election, and if there has been Russian penetration of our election software systems or anyone else's penetration, it could continue to affect vote counting for years.'Р”Р„ppel said that if ballots are manipulated within a voting machine, 'it won't be obvious, people won't know about it' unless there is an audit or recount. 'If this kind of attack had taken place weeks before the election, it would be cause for significant concern' for the outcome, he said. 'If you can manipulate that ballot programming you can often exploit the vulnerabilities,' Halderman said, opening the door to vote tampering.Р”Р„ndrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor who has studied election systems, said that if the report is accurate and the cyberattack occurred days before the November vote, it would likely have been too late to affect the outcome.Р”В«ut Appel said any tampering with vote systems could have serious and far-reaching effects. While voting machines are not connected to the internet, most of the electronic systems need to be programmed with computers which are connected, opening up security holes. 'This shows Russia was interested in attacking the computer infrastructure that operated the election and raises important questions including how far they got,' he told AFP. 'We need to ensure our voting systems are resilient going into 20' elections, she added.Р”Р„lex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist whose projects have included simulated hacking of voting machines, called the latest disclosures 'significant.' Hacking elections 'has always been thought of as a theoretical possibility, but now we know it is a real threat,' said Susan Greenhalgh, a researcher with the Verified Voting Foundation, an election systems monitor.

But the report suggests meddling went beyond psychological warfare to an attack on voting systems themselves. Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied any effort to influence the 2016 US election. 'There's not a lot of hope when you have are going up against an 800-pound bear.' 'A lot of those vendors are quite small,' Hall said. Hall said systems could be vulnerable because localities that manage elections rely on private software sellers that may lack resources against a well-funded cyber adversary.

'For over 15 years, I and a lot of other people have said we had never seen a confirmed hack of voting systems. 'These are our worst fears,' said Joseph Hall, chief technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology, who researches voting systems.

Berkman klein center election security