THE HACKABLE ELECTION
Major vulnerabilities found in electronic voting systems
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump squared off on the issue of cybersecurity in last week’s debate, but both candidates failed to highlight a startling reality: come November, the actual computers voters use to cast their ballots are essentially sitting ducks for malicious cyberattacks.
Yes, this election is hackable.
Imagine this scenario: You visit the local polling station on Election Day, receive an e-chip card to cast your vote for president, and go home to dinner. Only after you leave, the person you handed your chip card to modifies the card’s embedded code and votes a thousand more times, in your name, for the opposing party.
That’s just one way computer hackers could alter election results. The truth is, electronic voting systems have a multitude of vulnerabilities, leaving hackers to take their pick of nefarious ways to destabilize and dismantle the democratic system.
Cybersecurity firm Symantec uncovered some of these major vulnerabilities within the various electronic voting systems used in states and counties across the country during a “Hack the Vote” simulation.
“There is a risk at large here,” Symantec Senior Vice President Samir Kapuria said.
According to Symantec, the simple technological hardware in voting machines makes it relatively easy to take down a whole system of machines at a voting location.
Many electronic voting systems have a cartridge in the back that holds ballot information. It’s basically a USB drive.
“If somebody was really nefarious and put some tailor-made malware on one of those cartridges, that would walk from an individual system back to the nest,” Kapuria said.
The problem becomes even worse when you consider that many locations do not keep a paper trail of voter receipts.
There’s no simple solution to this problem, especially given that different counties and states use different types of voting machines.
“I wish there was an ‘easy button,’ but much like every industry that’s gone through this maturation, I think it starts with defining a standard,” Kapuria said. “Right now there’s such a variance, or quilt, of these systems being dispersed among states and counties, that you really need to create a standard.”
Essentially, these voting machines are computers, and while they are hackable like a computer, they can be protected like one, too.
“A lot of the security technology that’s out there can be applied to this. Everything from endpoint technology — because these are nothing more than computers — to network technology,” Kapuria said.