“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.
Full Article: Cyberattack threatens U.S. voting | Boston Herald.