With the wide variety of voting systems technology and uneven security requirements in local jurisdictions across the country, the best defense against election hacking may involve less technology, experts said. “I don’t have a lot of confidence” in the security of election equipment, said Alex Halderman, who is director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society and researches voting machine security. “The machines have vulnerabilities that could allow someone to hack in and alter the software that’s running on them,” he said at a Sept. 8 Brookings Institution discussion. “You don’t even need physical access to the machines.”
Nor do the machines need to be connected to the internet to be prone to manipulation, Halderman added.
“With just momentary access to the memory card that’s used to program the ballot for the election, we could insert vote-stealing software that would then reprogram the machine … and select whoever we wanted as the winning candidate,” he explained.
Halderman added that even if American machines were not manipulated by a foreign government in 2016, “I think it’s a matter of time” before vote tampering occurs, if the vulnerabilities are left unaddressed.
Full Article: Stronger election security with less technology — GCN.