Internet Voting | CTVotersCount.org

WNPR Where We Live: Inside Cyber Security

Yesterday, Where We Live, with John Dankowski, was a discussion of Cyber Security for consumers and business.

At about 17:49 into the show, I called in and reminded John Dankoski of the Secretary of the State’s Symposium on Online voting that he moderated just over three years ago. In response to my comment, Professor Bryan Ford of Yale, gave a very thorough summary of the potential risks of Internet voting.

Yesterday, Where We Live, with John Dankoski, was a discussion of Cyber Security for consumers and business. Listen to the program here <podcast>

At about 17:49 into the show, I called in and reminded John Dankoski of the Secretary of the State’s Symposium on Online Voting that he moderated just over three years ago. The Symposium was intended for legislators. Only three actually attended.

To little avail, the legislature twice passed Internet voting for military and overseas voters – every time a business, government agency, or the Military is hacked it gets less and less believable that Internet voting is safe for democracy, less and less believable that the State or all of our 169 towns can defend Internet voting from attackers.

In response to my comment, Professor Bryan Ford of Yale, gave a very thorough summary of the potential risks of Internet voting.

The whole show is a great summary of the wide range of risks to consumers and the challenges to our infrastructure, specifically utilities.

General Assembly ready to protect everything Internet. Except voting?

Meanwhile Congress, in-spite of gridlock, takes the time to appeal old law calling for Internet voting experiments. Isn’t it time for the General Assembly to follow suit?

Hartford Courant article yesterday: Drones, Privacy: Legislative Issues Reflect Changing Times <read>

The coming legislative session is likely to be dominated by the usual fights over taxes and spending. But lawmakers are also poised to ponder other issues that reflect changes in the social fabric propelled by technology.

From protecting student privacy from firms seeking to access a burgeoning trove of educational data to regulating smartphone – based car services such as Uber to a bold future of drones and driverless cars, the General Assembly could be asked to craft public policy on concepts that scarcely existed a few years ago…

Rep. Vin Candelora, the deputy leader of the House Republican caucus, said that in many ways these are the issues that define our times. “I really think issues are as big as the budget. One is dealing with our fiscal health but these are dealing with the health of our society,” he said.

“The big theme here is data collection. What are people’s rights to privacy? Once information gets out on the Internet, it can never be taken back,”

In 2013 the Legislature unanimously passed Internet voting for the second time. It was vetoed the 1st time for good reason by Governor Malloy, yet signed inexplicably the second time. It would force the Secretary of the State and 169 towns individually to do what the State, the U.S. Government, (including the Military), retailers, and big banks, not to mention Sony have failed to do: Defy science and secure the Internet. <read our past stories on Internet voting here>

Time to ask your legislator “If Internet banking attacks annualy cost banks billions, and Sony cannot protect its email from North Korea, how can you expect our town registrars to protect Internet voting? Who will pay for an election debacle?”

Some related good news:

Congress, in-spite of gridlock, takes the time to appeal 2002 law calling for Internet voting experiments. Isn’t it time for the General Assembly to follow suit?

Last week the National Defense Authorization Act contained a small provision appreciated by voting integrity advocates, repealing a mandate for demonstration project for Internet voting project:

FY 15 NDAA Bill Text (RULES COMMITTEE PRINT 113–58 HOUSE AMENDMENT TO THE TEXT OF S. 1847) (now Act):

“SEC. 593. REPEAL OF ELECTRONIC VOTING DEMONSTRATION PROJECT.

Section 1604 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (Public Law 107–107; 52 U.S.C. 20301 note) is repealed.”

Joint Explanatory Statement (JOINT EXPLANATORY STATEMENT TO ACCOMPANY THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2015 (which accompanies the Act):

Repeal of electronic voting demonstration project (sec. 593)

The Senate committee-reported bill contained a provision(sec. 1076) that would repeal section 1604 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2002 (Public Law 107- 107)that requires the Secretary of Defense to carry out an electronic voting demonstration project. The House bill contained no similar provision. The agreement includes this provision.

Advocates have long worked to have the act repealed and to get the FVAP to reveal results of a study of Internet voting. As we posted last September: What is FVAP hiding? Whom if anyone are they assisting?

Hopefully, it won’t take 12 years for Connecticut to understand the risks of Internet voting and repeal its risky 2013 law.

How can we vote on Internet that is unsafe for banks, Canada, and alarms the President?

Recent articles highlight the folly and blind faith in technology leading many to trust voting on the Internet.

As Roosevelt said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” seems to apply here.

There are real cyber risks, we need to protect or digital assets. Yet it does not help to jump to the conclusion that every breech is the work of our biggest enemy of the moment.

Like building new civic centers, baseball stadiums, and bankrolling fishing and hunting retailers there is plenty of real world evidence that Internet voting does not work well, yet we persist despite the evidence. Apparently the technology that actually works to protect Democracy, a technology actually under assault in Connecticut, is Freedom of Information.

Recent articles highlight the folly and blind faith in technology leading many to trust voting on the Internet

From the NYTimes: Obama Had Security Fears on JPMorgan Data Breach <read>

President Obama and his top national security advisers began receiving periodic briefings on the huge cyberattack at JPMorgan Chase and other financial institutions this summer, part of a new effort to keep security officials as up dated on major cyberattacks as they are on Russian incursions into Ukraine or attacks by the Islamic State.

But in the JPMorgan case, according to administration officials familiar with the briefings, who would not speak on the record about intelligence matters, no one could tell the president what he most wanted to know: What was the motive of the attack? “The question kept coming back, ‘Is this plain old theft, or is Putin retaliating?’ ” one senior official said, referring to the American led sanctions on Russia. “And the answer was: ‘We don’t know for sure.’ ”

More than three months after the first attacks were discovered, the source is still unclear and
there is no evidence any money was taken from any institution.

As Roosevelt said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” seems to apply here. There are real cyber risks, we need to protect or digital assets. Yet it does not help to jump to the conclusion that every breech is the work of our biggest enemy of the moment (e.g. China last year, Putin here, and ISIS last week) when we apparently don’t have a clue.

Just as irrational is the fear in then Connecticut Legislature, (and perhaps in the statehouse) where many voted for Internet voting under the threat of being deemed “unpatriotic”.

Of course, Internet voting is not banking. Internet voting is more vulnerable, and more critical to our Democracy. As highlighted by this recent report:

From GMA News: Online voting not ready for worldwide roll-out, study concludes <read>

The research, produced by the Atlantic Council think tank and the online protection firm McAfee, concluded that “security will need to be vastly improved” before it becomes feasible to adopt Internet voting on a large scale.

According to the study, online voting faces more complex obstacles than electronic commerce, where a customer can be reimbursed in the case of fraud or theft.

“Online voting poses a much tougher problem” than e-commerce, the report said.

“Lost votes are unacceptable… and unlike paper ballots, electronic votes cannot be ‘rolled back’ or easily recounted.”

The report said hackers could paralyze an online voting system or, even worse, change the results without being detected.

A major problem of online voting is that any system must verify the identity of the voter, and at the same time guarantee anonymity in the process.

Some experts believe it could be decades before online voting becomes mainstream.
Joseph Hall of the Center for Democracy and Technology said that many security experts believe “the timeline will be 30 to 40 years” before the technological hurdles to online voting are overcome.

One of the problems is the “uncontrolled platform,” in which voting software or computers can be infected, Hall said at a discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council.

Jordi Puiggali of the online voting technology firm Scytl said that while Internet balloting has not been perfect, “we have to consider the risks of voting channels that already exist,” citing practices such as stuffed ballot boxes.

The researchers cited a study released earlier this year by University of Michigan scientists on online voting in Estonia, the first country to hold national elections on the Internet.

That study, which is to be published in a scientific journal next month, revealed vulnerabilities in Estonia’s online voting system.

“Attackers could target the election servers or voters’ clients to alter election results or undermine the legitimacy of the system,” the study said.

Estonian officials have maintained that the system is secure.

Wednesday’s report said that online voting has enormous potential if security can be improved.

“For the digital generation, unsupervised polling via mobile devices may be the ‘killer app’ of e-voting,” the report said, adding that biometric and other security features may need to be perfected.

“Broad adoption of most new technologies generally takes longer than technology optimists hope, but it will happen,” the report added.

“Online voting’s potential benefits in terms of reach, access and participation have the potential to revolutionize the democratic process around the world.”

Count us among the skeptics that Internet voting will be safe in 30-40 years. We say it is a good bet that 20 years from now it it will still be 30-40 years off, and maybe that will be the last we will hear of it. On the other hand it might be possible with a radical redesign of the underlying Internet. (Geeks like myself will remember IP 6, which we were all supposed to be using by about 10 years ago. Great news its up to 4% now.)

From Aljazera: Latest Internet voting reports show failures across the board <read>

Internet voting, a technology often cited as a solution to the United States’ problematic voting machines, received failing security and accessibility grades in the latest in-depth audit conducted by the City of Toronto. Two of the three vendors audited by the city currently have contracts with over a dozen U.S. jurisdictions for similar technologies.

The accessibility report, prepared by researchers at the Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, and the security report, prepared by researchers at Concordia and Western universities, were obtained by Al Jazeera America through a Freedom of Information Act

request.

Proponents of Internet voting, largely disabilities groups and advocates for military voters overseas, point to the apparent ease-of-use of other Internet-based activities, such as banking, and claim the technology would lead to higher turnout rates.

The reports highlight the difficulty in creating a voting system that isn’t more susceptible to corruption than existing voting technology and that is easy enough to use for voters with a variety of personal computer setups, including those with disabilities who often use alternatives to traditional mice, keyboards and screens.

Got that? Susceptible to corruption. And does not provide expected benefits. Sounds a lot like those civic center, sports stadium, and fishy retail projects! Meanwhile the U.S. Government continues to stonewall:

A nonprofit watchdog group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sued FVAP last month to force them to disclose their own audits of Internet voting conducted three years ago. In 2012 the program told Congress it would release the records to the public by the middle of 2013.

What is FVAP hiding? Whom if anyone are they assisting?

Electronic Privacy Information Center sues the Department of Defense to release Federal Voting Assistance Program test of Internet voting. <read>

We find it hard to believe the tests went well. What could possibly be the reason to withhold tests that could be used by states to learn about the risks and possibly any safe ways discovered to perform Internet voting?

Who would benefit by withholding such data? Internet voting vendors? Proponents of Internet voting? Those who would like to compromise elections or intimidate voters?

Electronic Privacy Information Center sues the Department of Defense to release Federal Voting Assistance Program test of Internet voting. <read>

Who would benefit by withholding such data? Internet voting vendors? Proponents of Internet voting? Those who would like to compromise elections or intimidate voters?

From the complaint:

PIC has constructively exhausted its administrative remedies. EPIC asks the Court to order prompt disclosure of all responsive records…

Computer scientists have long expressed concern about the reliability, security, and integrity of online voting. E-voting “not only entails serious security risks, but also requires voters to relinquish their right to a secret ballot…

n 2011 FVAP requested $39 m to study online voting. In the budget request to Congress, DOD wrote “Funds will complete the kiosk-based system testing eval uation of results, and support similar tests on remote PC-based systems…

Later in 2011 , the FVAP deputy director stated publicly “We also did voting system test laboratory testing against the UOCAVA pilot program testing requirements to give us an assessment moving forward and perhaps provide some additional context as to where we are when it comes to security and overall usability of these systems as we move forward
with standards to support the electronic voting demonstration project. And then lastly of the completed objectives so far we also did penetration testing on those same systems, the electronic voting support Wizard as well as those systems that originally are (unintelligible) for Internet voting.”

When asked if the tests of the online voting systems that the FVAP were funding would be made public, the FVAP deputy director responded, “Not publicly available as of yet but it will be publicly available.”…

On August 13, 2012, California Secretary of State Bowen wrote to FVAP and requested the results of its tests of the FVAP online ballot marking systems. Secretary Bowen wrote, “California and the state’s military and overseas voters that may use such a system would benefit from being able to examine the results of any testing of ballot marking wizards arranged, paid for, or conducted by FVAP.”…

EPIC, and many of its expert advisors, believe that it is absolutely critical for the documents sought in this matter be disclosed prior to further deployment of e-voting systems in the Unit ed States.

It should be obvious that California is not the only state starting with a “C” that could use that information. Perhaps you can think of such a state with a lot less resources than California, a state with a Legislature and Governor bent on Internet voting.

Read the complaint for more justification of releasing the report produced with taxpayer dollars and for more in the epic saga leading to EPIC’s complaint.

If I can’t register to vote online, why can I vote online?

The University of Maryland shut down its voter registration system based on a breech of their student ID system. Not quite the end of the World. Yet, online voting would be another matter.

The University of Maryland shut down its voter registration system based on a breech of their student ID system. From The Diamondback: University officials shut down online voter registration system following data breach <read>

[Student affairs vice-president] Zacker said online voter registration caused a significant increase in registered students from the 2008 election, when a total of 2,500 students registered to vote.

University officials said they decided to shut down the system because it posed a risk to students’ information. The online registration system functioned by using the electronic signature and social security number saved in the database for the student ID cards, which were compromised in the data breach.

“Following the ID card system breach, the existing infrastructure was determined to be vulnerable and was subsequently shut down,” Chief Information Officer Eric Denna wrote in an email. “The voter registration system cannot work without accessing the ID card system.”…

“They said at this time, ‘No,’ just because security for students is the number one thing, obviously, just making sure their information is secure, so they turned it down,” [Student Government Association President] Ronk said.

Of course, the University has the resources to likely get the system back up if they choose to in the near future. Actually its not quite the end of the world, since students can still register to vote long before the November election. Hopefully, something similar will never happen to the Connecticut online voter registration system, once again, not the end of the world.

Yet, online voting would be another matter, there is not a lot of leeway if online voting were breached, knocked down, risked other State systems, or subject to a denial of service attack shortly before an election…especially if it was designed to help those in the Military or overseas vote.

But that is Maryland, who would question Connecticut’s ability to protect our own systems?

Carter Center: Study of Norway’s Internet Voting

A recent post, brought the Carter Center’s report to our attention. Today we highlight Scott M. Fulton’s thoughtful post based on the report.

I look at a chart like this and see a gold mine of potential exploits–handoffs, air-gaps,… How long before such a system is cracked once, someplace in the world?

A recent post, brought the Carter Center’s report to our attention: Expert Study Mission Report The Carter Center Internet Voting Pilot: Norway’s 2013 Parliamentary Elections. <.pdf> The Carter Center report is highly enlightening, covering Norway’s pilot, Internet voting in general, and the challenges of credible observation of elections.

Today we highlight Scott M. Fulton’s thoughtful post based on the report: Scytl e-voting exposes the dangers of automating a democracy <read>

The truth is, any forward progress we make toward better communication with one another, toward social awareness, toward even expanded conscience of the world around us, can only be accomplished by each of us individually. Technology can empower us to do that, or to do the precise opposite. It is neither to credit nor to blame.

But the corollary to that principle is this, and it is a caution I try to repeat as often as possible: Because technology has no inherent polarization toward progress, simply applying it to a problem does not solve it…

The process of voting in Norway, according to that [Carter Center] report, was not at all dissimilar to the way B-52 bombers were told to attack Moscow in the movie Dr. Strangelove:

In order to vote, a voter had to register their mobile phone with a centralized government register (one could do so online while the voting was underway). The voter should have also received a special card… delivered through the postal service, with personalized numeric return codes. These cards provided the voter a list of four-digit numbers corresponding to each party running for election. The four-digit numbers were randomly assigned for every voter so that, for example, any two voters who wanted to cast their vote for Labour would unlikely have the same return codes associated to the Labour party.

The Carter Center charted the conceptual model of the technology involved:

Imagine your local school board election being charted by a process model this complex. Consider the degree to which people who are already disenchanted by the whole concept of contributing their 1/10,000 of a preference, will simply avoid the process altogether. Maybe this fact alone is what makes it so attractive to people in the election business.

As someone who has regularly sat next to security engineers, I look at a chart like this and see a gold mine of potential exploits–handoffs, air-gaps, SMS as the communications medium. Perhaps Scytl’s system is lock-tight today, but the very fact of its complexity, coupled with its wide-ranging impact on the public, makes it an automatic target. How long before such a system is cracked once, someplace in the world? And when that happens, how many other elections’ veracity will be called into question? How many Bush v. Gore cases will this nation withstand?

The Carter Center report goes into further details that add to the understanding of complexity of the system. Thinking about each part it is easy to speculate on the risks of attack, especially attacks by insiders – from public employees, vendor personnel from the system vendor, and various network support contractors. Add that the near impossibility of independent verification of every possible critical point; along with the impossibility of public trust in any such complex and technically sophisticated evaluation.

Worse than Hurricane Sandy? As bad as climate denial?

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

A new ZD-Net Editorial: Internet voting: A really bad idea whose time has come <read>

Summary: Believe it or not, most states have some provisions for allowing people to vote over the Internet. The pressure is on to expand it, even though a secure online voting system is impossible using today’s technology.

We have been saying it over and over. In Connecticut, only the Secretary of the State, Denise Merrill gets it. The Senate and House have passed Internet voting twice, unanimously. Governor Malloy vetoed it the first time because it is risky and unconstitutional, nothing changed, yet he signed it the next time.

Its similar to ‘climate denial’, in that both ignore the risks, ignore the science. In Connecticut its thus proven that science denial is not just for Republicans – here its bipartisan and almost unanimous. We do not want to compare the two exactly. Climate denial might end human life or at least life as we know it. Internet voting denial can only wipe out our democracy.

The area on the Jersey shore where I grew up was hit very hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. It was many weeks before some of the people could even go home. Life was a mess. And then, a little over a week later, was the 2012 election day.

The state made it clear that they would make whatever accommodations it could to help people vote if they were displaced by the storm. So far, so good, but my ears perked up when I heard about “email voting.”

Yes, the state announced that voters could email in a vote. This was part of an effort to make all non-traditional forms of voting, including mail-in and fax, easier. In fact, voters were instructed to ignore the part of the relevant web page where it says “The County Clerk cannot accept faxed or emailed copies of a Application for Vote by Mail Ballot, unless you are a Military or Overseas Voter, since an original signature is required.”

But certainly such circumstances were sui generis, and no sane state authority would contemplate Internet voting in the normal course of things, right? Wrong…

Speaking of around the world, Estonia is the current poster child for electronic voting. Estonians at home and around the world can vote online using a national ID card, a smart card. Clearly a system of digital national IDs has no chance of being adopted in the US, but for all its sophistication, the Estonian system is still vulnerable to tampering according to recent research…

In fact, it’s easy to find research by people who understand computer security pointing out the considerable risks from internet voting. There are other people who would like to increase turnout no matter what and who are happy to declare that all technical problems can be worked out by the experts. Well, the experts have spoken: Internet voting is not and cannot be made secure with current technology.

Estonia defends I-voting system, critics respond

Two days ago we posted the video and referenced the web by security experts showing the hacking of and their concerns with the Internet voting system used in national elections by Estonia. Yesterday there were further developments, responses, and rebuttals:

A story in the Guardian which was a summary of the information from the video and press conference <read>

The results showed that “although the Estonian system contains a number of security safeguards, these are insufficient to protect against the attacks we tried”, said Alex Halderman, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, who was an e-voting election observer in Estonia in 2013.

Those attacks included taking over voters’ PCs to cast fake votes, and hacking into the vote-counting servers to install software that would alter the final count.

Estonian voters use a combination of smartcards, with built-in chips, and smartphone verification to confirm their votes. Even so, the researchers said it was vulnerable; and Kitcat warned that e-voting might be an area which could never be guaranteed safe from hacking.

A defense by Estonia’s National Electoral Committee was quickly releases<read>

The results showed that “although the Estonian system contains a number of security safeguards, these are insufficient to protect against the attacks we tried”, said Alex Halderman, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Michigan, who was an e-voting election observer in Estonia in 2013.

Those attacks included taking over voters’ PCs to cast fake votes, and hacking into the vote-counting servers to install software that would alter the final count.

Estonian voters use a combination of smartcards, with built-in chips, and smartphone verification to confirm their votes. Even so, the researchers said it was vulnerable; and Kitcat warned that e-voting might be an area which could never be guaranteed safe from hacking…

And quickly followed by a rebuttal by the security experts <read>

Here we provide the full rebuttal, which repeats and responds to the issues raised by the Estonia Committee

The National Election Committee of Estonia have published a response to an article by The Guardian which reported the findings we have published on the Estonian e-voting system.

Here is our response to the claims of the Election Committee:

“The system has been used in six elections (municipal, national and European) without a single incident which have influenced the outcome.”

Our research argues that a well resourced attacker, such as a nation-state like Russia, would be able to undetectably steal votes in an election using the Estonian e-voting system. We maintain that the Election Committee cannot, by virtue of the failings in the systems used, irrefutably prove that the six elections thus far conducted were never influenced nor could they prove that for elections using the system in the future based on the current design.

This is one of the fundamental problems with Estonia’s design, which depends on complex software to report on votes stored invisibly within the `black boxes’ of servers. A key benefit of paper-based elections is that post-election audit and verification using proven techniques can provide a very high level of confidence in the integrity of the results.

“Estonia has conducted its online balloting in a unique spirit of transparency: every aspect of online balloting procedures is fully documented, these procedures are rigorously audited, and video documenting all conducted procedures is posted online.”

We have warmly welcomed these moves to transparency but they have not been sufficient. Video demonstrably does not cover all critical procedures conducted.
Even when a procedure has been taped, only portions of the activities were captured because there was one camera but two computer screens in use at the same time.

“In addition to opening every aspect of our balloting to observers, we have posted the source code of our voting software online.”

As confirmed at our meeting with Mr Martens and his colleagues from the Election Committee on 13th May 2014, the source code for both the voting clients and log server software has never been released. The committee never intend to release the code to those elements despite them being, by the Committee’s own admission, fundamental to its operations and security protections. Thus the claim that the source is posted online is a very partial claim. Furthermore source code availabilty, while an important basic requirement for transparency in such a system, is not in any way sufficient to ensure its security and accuracy.

“We believe that online balloting allows us to achieve a level of security greater than what is possible with paper ballots. “

The Election Committee have failed to demonstrate or prove this very significant claim. Our independent and detailed analysis of their system’s procedures, design and available source code suggests that the system provides security far below that of a well-run paper-based election.

“1. The researchers have not discovered any new attack vectors that had not already been accounted for in the design of our system as a whole.”

We disagree. The Committee are mis-portraying the client-side attack we have identified as using a ‘keylogger’ when this is not the case.

“2. It is not feasible to effectively conduct the described attacks to alter the results of the voting.”

We are surprised the Election Committee feel able to make such a strong claim given that in the same statement they also complain that they say, “At this point, we can give only preliminary answers to allegations published in the Guardian, as the researchers have not shared the full results of their work with us.” We don’t believe it is reasonable for the Committee to have such certainty in refuting our research when they acknowledge they don’t have the full details.

We regret that we have not been able to publish as much detail as we would have liked, as quickly as we would have liked. This has been a significant project which we have undertaken independently and without contact with any parties or groups in Estonia to ensure full independence. As soon as our research identified the seriousness of the vulnerabilities we prepared to explain the situation to Estonia as quickly as possible. To ensure our impartiality we wanted to make sure that nobody in Estonia had advance and unfair notice of our findings. We also felt ethically duty-bound to inform Estonia of the issues before the system was used again for the binding European Parliamentary elections later this month.

On Tuesday 13th May 2014 we privately met members of the Estonian Electronic Voting Committee to disclose technical details of our findings. We have been working hard to publish appropriate technical information in public.

“3. The electoral committee has numerous safeguards and failsafe mechanisms to detect attacks against the elections or manipulated results.”

It is unclear how meaningful or effective these claimed measures might be as the Election Committee will not disclose any details as to the type of safeguards in place. If the Committee was truly confident in the measures they would explain them to us and the citizens they are serving.

The attacks we describe are the result of architectural weaknesses in the Estonian system, and they could be virtually impossible to detect if carried out by a sophisticated state-level attacker.

“4. The website put up by the security researchers (estoniaevoting.org) contains numerous factual and detail errors, and does not provide technical details on the alleged vulnerabilities in our system.”

We are happy to correct any errors or misunderstandings but unfortunately the Election Committee have chosen not to identify what they might be referring to on our website. We remain open to hearing any corrections.

“Nevertheless, their last minute claims, published two days before the beginning of online balloting for elections to the European Parliament, give us no reason to suspend online balloting.”

We first published information late on Sunday 11th May 2014 and sent email notifications on Saturday 10th May 2014. Electronic voting in Estonia opens on Thursday 15th May 2014. Thus we dispute the claim by the Committee of ‘two days’ warning.

We look forward to the continuing debate around e-voting.
[Updated 14th May 2014 to clarify that we had privately met the Electronic Voting Committee to disclose technical information.]

Ethical Hackers 2, Internet Voting 0

Two days ago an international team of investigators demonstrated attacks and articulated weaknesses in the Estonian voting system used by 20% to 25% of voters in their national elections.

In the fall of 2010 Washington D.C. ran a brief open test of the Internet voting system it was proposing for use in that year’s November election. It was quickly hacked by a team of graduate students from the University of Michigan, lead by Professor Alex Halderman. <summary and video>

Two days ago an international team of investigators including Professor Halderman and graduate students demonstrated attacks and articulated weaknesses in the Estonian voting system used by 20% to 25% of voters in their national elections. Information is all available at https://estoniaevoting.org/

The video summary is a great way to understand what they did.

What we found alarmed us. There were staggering gaps in procedural and operational security, and the architecture of the system leaves it open to cyberattacks from foreign powers that could alter votes or leave election outcomes in dispute. We have confirmed these attacks in our lab — they are real threats. We are urgently recommending that Estonia discontinue use of the system.

They easily demonstrated attacks on the election servers and on personal computers used for voting. They found additional means of attack that they could have demonstrated. While they applauded Estonia’s efforts at transparency, they found it both insufficient and that it exposed server passwords on the Internet during the voting period.

If Internet voting is so safe, why is the power grid so vulnerable?

Of course the answer is that Internet voting is not safe, much more vulnerable than the power grid. But why don’t we know that?

How are grid vulnerabilities different from the vulnerabilities of electronic voting and Internet voting in particular? Lets look at a story from the LA Times highlighting vulnerabilities in the power grid

Of course the answer is that Internet voting is not safe, much more vulnerable than the power grid. But why don’t we know that? Could it be that voting is largely a Government managed function and therefor Government articulation of vulnerabilities, and public expenditures on security would be less welcome?

Today we have a story from the LA Times highlighting vulnerabilities in the power grid: Security holes in power grid have federal officials scrambling <read>

Adam Crain assumed that tapping into the computer networks used by power companies to keep electricity zipping through transmission lines would be nearly impossible in these days of heightened vigilance over cybersecurity.

When he discovered how wrong he was, his work sent Homeland Security Department officials into a scramble.

Crain, the owner of a small tech firm in Raleigh, N.C., along with a research partner, found penetrating transmission systems used by dozens of utilities to be startlingly easy.

How are grid vulnerabilities different from the vulnerabilities of electronic voting and Internet voting in particular? We can start with the article subtitle:

In Congress, the vulnerability of the power grid has emerged as among the most pressing domestic security concerns

Internet voting is hardly a concern in the Connecticut Legislature which unanimously passed Internet voting two years in a row mandating the Secretary of the State and Military Department do what the DoD, experts from Homeland Security, and the National Institute of standards say is impossible. And even here grid security is a big concern of state government.

Then again maybe they are also the same in some ways:

“There are a lot of people going through various stages of denial” about how easily terrorists could disrupt the power grid, he said. “If I could write a tool that does this, you can be sure a nation state or someone with more resources could.”…

Some members of Congress want to empower regulators to force specific security upgrades at utilities. Others are attacking whistle-blowers and the media, demanding an investigation into disclosures of how easily the country’s power grid could be shut down.

Here is a difference. Who would even attempt insuring the safety of our election system? Let alone Internet voting?

Lloyds’ appraisers have been making a lot of visits lately to power companies seeking protection against the risk of cyberattack. Their takeaway: Security at about half the companies they visit is too weak for Lloyds to offer a policy.

Power companies are actual monopolies, but so are local election departments. Some of the same issues apply:

The problem, said Scott White, a security technology scholar at Drexel University in Philadelphia, is that “you are basically dealing with these monopolies that are determining for themselves which expenditures are a priority. Security has not generally been one.”

Utilities deny they’ve ignored the problem, pointing to the billions of dollars they say they’ve spent to upgrade outdated computer systems and close security holes.

Here is a difference, something seldom seen when Internet voting is adopted and declared successful:

They are signing contracts with security firms like Booz Allen Hamilton to investigate such things as to how to keep potentially mischievous devices out of the equipment they buy, often from foreign suppliers. The security firms help clients sift through reams of confidential intelligence provided by federal agencies. They simulate cyberattacks.

“It is the equivalent of war gaming, like the military does,” said Steve Senterfit, vice president of commercial energy at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Here in Connecticut we pride ourselves in the safety of 169 autonomous elected election departments. But that also has its downsides. Like the power grid, electronic voting involves users’ computers or distributed military computers:

But critics, including many in Congress, say more needs to be done to shore up a grid increasingly exposed to attacks. They note that so-called smart grid technology, which allows operators to calibrate the flow of energy from an increasingly diverse pool of sources, has opened new security risks.

The technology relies on devices in remote locations that constantly send signals to substations to help control when juice needs to be brought on and offline. The smarter the grid becomes, though, the more entry points an attacker can exploit.

“The whole idea of a smart grid is to push equipment further and further away from the substations,” Crain said. “Some of it is even in people’s homes. It’s physically impossible to secure it all.”

Here is a difference: The grid is apparently not on the Internet, so it is actually just a little harder to compromise:

The vulnerabilities Crain exposed, for example, had been overlooked because taking advantage of them requires an attacker to have access to closed, local networks. Now, a cyberterrorist with a little knowledge and the right laptop can gain that access and cause chaos in a regional power system merely by linking up with the control panel at a secluded electric vehicle charging station.