Online voting is sometimes heralded as a solution to all our election headaches. Proponents claim it eliminates hassle, provides better verification for voters and auditors, and may even increase voter turnout. In reality, it’s not a panacea, and certainly not ready for use in U.S. elections. Recent events have illustrated the complex problem of voting in the presence of a state-level attacker, and online voting will make U.S. elections more vulnerable to foreign interference. In just the past year, we have seen Russian hackers exfiltrate information from the Democratic National Committee and probe voter databases for vulnerabilities, prompting the U.S. government to formally accuse Russia of hacking. In light of those events, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security may soon classify voting systems as critical infrastructure, underscoring the significant cybersecurity risks facing American elections. Internet voting would paint an even more attractive target on the ballot box for Russian adversaries with a record of attempting to disrupt elections through online attacks.
In the face of such an adversary, the few online voting trials that have been carried out in the U.S. do not inspire confidence. In 2010, Washington, D.C. ran a pilot of an online voting system and invited security experts to try to breach the system. Hackers changed all the votes in fewer than 48 hours. The 2016 Utah GOP Caucus included an online voting option that was rife with procedural mistakes that prevented an estimated 10,000 Utahns from using the system.
Online voting has also been conducted during live elections in places like Estonia, Norway, and Australia. It is hard to know the degree of security attained in these elections, because vendors and officials have no incentive to disclose suspected breaches. However, independent researchers discovered vulnerabilities in both the 2015 New South Wales online election and in Estonia’s system in a 2013 study. Among the problems that were discovered: exploitable vulnerabilities in the connections between voters’ computers and election servers, as well as procedural and architectural weaknesses that could allow state-level attackers like Russia to manipulate entire elections.
Voting is an unusually difficult security problem, because officials must guarantee a correct result while simultaneously ensuring that voters’ choices remain private—and all without being able to trust any individual participants to act impartially. Furthermore, the election has to produce a result on election day, and we cannot delay voting or rerun the election if the system comes under attack. These requirements mean that traditional online security techniques, like those used to protect banking and commerce, are insufficient for elections.
Full Article: The Security Challenges of Online Voting Have Not Gone Away – IEEE Spectrum.