From
COMPUTERWORLD
Security vendor demonstrates hack of U.S. e-voting machine
Other election security experts suggest the hack is nothing new
Nov 7, 2016 9:17 AM PT
By Grant Gross
Senior Editor, IDG News Service
A hacker armed with a $25 PCMCIA card can, within a few minutes, change the vote totals on an aging electronic voting machine that is now in limited use in 13 U.S. states, a cybersecurity vendor has demonstrated.
The hack by security vendor Cylance -- which released a video of it Friday -- caught the attention of noted National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, but other critics of e-voting security dismissed the vulnerability as nothing new.
The Cylance hack demonstrated a theoretical vulnerability described in research going back a decade, the company noted.
The hack is "not surprising," Pamela Smith, president of elections security advocacy group Verified Voting, said by email. "The timing of the release is a little odd."
Hackers, with U.S. intelligence agencies pointing to the Russian government, have been attempting to raise doubts about the validity of this week's U.S. election ... At the same time, ... Donald Trump has been warning supporters ... that the election may be "rigged" against him.
The Cylance demonstration was "not new and badly timed," said Joe Kiniry, a security researcher and CEO at Free and Fair, an election technology developer. "This kind of attack has been demonstrated on almost all of the widely deployed machines used today."
Cylance defended the video, saying it is a timely reminder of the security problems with e-voting machines. ...
Releasing the video just before the U.S. election strikes at the issue while people are paying attention, ...
Dominion Voting Systems, the vendor of the voting machine, did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the Cylance hack.
The Sequoia AVC Edge Mk1 e-voting machine targeted by Cylance is used by some voting precincts in potential presidential swing states ... The machine is used statewide in Nevada and used widely in Wisconsin, but both states have post-election audit procedures in place, Verified Voting's Smith said.
In other states, including Florida and Colorado, the machines are used only in a handful of locations for voters with special accessibility requirements. Pennslyvania uses the machine in just one county, Smith said.
In the Cylance hack, a PCMCIA card, programmed with the hacker's desired vote totals, can be inserted into a slot on the Sequoia AVC machine. The hacker can then change the vote totals, ...
Some states have tamper seals on e-voting machines in an effort to discourage on-site hacking, but poll workers may not realize the potential problems if the seal is broken, ...
Still, the potential uses of the Cylance hack are limited, said Douglas Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa. The major concern during this election has been hacking from Russians or other overseas hackers, and the Cylance hack depends on physical access to each machine, he noted.
The Cylance hack would be "devastating if the adversary we were concerned about was a local political machine intent on controlling, perhaps, a county," Jones said by email.
Even such a local hack might require a conspiracy involving several people, with the possibility of someone leaking the plans, he added.
"There may be such corrupt political machines, and we ought to phase out these voting machines to prevent their abuse, but it's not the big news story of this election," Jones said. "This hack is irrelevant to concerns about Vladimir Putin trying to control the presidential election."