Georgia Secretary of State and Republican gubernatorial nominee Brian Kemp’s office seems to have a cybersecurity problem. With less than 48 hours before voters go to the polls in Georgia, Kemp announced his office was investigating the Georgia Democratic Party for an alleged failed hack of the secretary of state’s voting website. The leader of an organization that claims to have disclosed these cyber vulnerabilities to his office says the blaming of his political opponents is both “fabricated and preposterous.” It is part of a pattern of Kemp not securing voting systems, then politicizing and weaponizing his cybersecurity vulnerabilities against those who report them. … The organizations that received the information about the alleged problems are among those suing the secretary of state for the high rate of rejections of absentee mail ballots in Georgia, as well as the Democratic Party. Marks told Route Fifty the organizations had six cybersecurity experts of “national preeminence” in the computer science world review the data. All of them came to the same conclusion that the vulnerability was real and significant. “The experts who did look at it immediately recognized the problem with a quick look and realized delving in further could be problematic from a legal standpoint,” Marks said. “And these aren’t people that come at this from a political standpoint, they’re scientists.”
Marks said the experts said the flaw could leave the Georgia residents wide open to not just identity theft, but to having their names altered or eliminated from the electronic pollbooks that govern who is allowed to vote in the state.
By Saturday, both groups decided to pass information on the vulnerabilities along to the secretary of state.
“We cannot evaluate whether pollbook data has been altered or whether this extreme security risk may impact Tuesday’s election,” Marks wrote in an email release. “We again urge Secretary Kemp and the State Election Board to do everything humanly possible to correct errors in pollbooks for use on Tuesday and make a paper backup copy for every polling location.”
With Georgia lacking a paper trail for ballots or pollbooks—other voting vulnerabilities that Georgia has successfully defended itself against fixing in court—the flaw opens up the potential for mass disruption in voting.
Full Article: Brian Kemp Was Warned of a Cyber Vulnerability. He Weaponized It—Again – Route Fifty.