The software that will be used to count votes in the upcoming municipal elections is still not safe. Hackers can use the vulnerable software to influence the election results, experts that examined the software told RTL Nieuws. Ethical hacker Sijmen Ruwhof discovered more than 50 vulnerabilities in the software. He calls ten of them ‘high risk’. Last year Ruwhof also concluded that the software – called OSV – is vulnerable to attacks. “The average iPad is more secure than the Dutch voting system”, Ruwhof said at the time.This prompted former Home Affairs Minister Ronald Plasterk to order the votes in the parliamentary election counted by hand.
Kasja Ollongren, the current Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations, decided to use the OSV software in the upcoming municipal elections, against the advice of experts, according to the broadcaster. Municipalities upload the results of local polling stations on the OSV, which counts the votes and bundles them into a document. According to Ollongren, the new version of OSV is sufficiently protected against hackers. To prevent manipulation, computers running the software will not be connected to the internet.
This extra security measure is not sufficient, security expert Arjen Kamphuis said to RTL. “A smart attacker can of course also hack all the municipality computers a month in advance, when they’re still on the internet.”
Full Article: Concerns raised over election software safety | NL Times.