'Fatally Flawed' Systems Await Voters: 'Drastic Change Needed'

A new paper, and video, has been issued by the Computer Security Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This group contributed to voting system reviews conducted by Ohio and California last year.  The 11-page paper was presented in July at the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis held in Seattle.  Much of it is comprehensible to most voters.  The Group also prepared a 17-minute video, presented in two parts (on page 2) that illustrates several attacks, and shows how security seals are ineffective. 

The paper clarifies that security is lacking in both Sequoia and ES&S voting systems: "the electronic voting systems that we have reviewed are neither secure nor well-designed."  It spends time discussing the certification process which does not and cannot adequately secure a software driven voting system:

"While most critical systems are continuously scrutinized and evaluated for safety and correctness, electronic voting systems are not subject to the same level of scrutiny. A number of recent studies have shown that most (if not all) of the electronic voting systems being used today are fatally flawed and that their quality does not match the importance of the task that they are supposed to carry out."  (emphasis added) 

This conclusion corroborates many prior statements made by security experts.  Twelve such quotes are reproduced here.  The paper states: 

"All voting systems recently analyzed by independent security testers have been found to contain fatal security flaws that could compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the voting process.

...

"Our experience suggests that there is a need for a drastic change in the way in which electronic systems are designed, developed, and tested. 

...

"Unless electronic voting systems are held up to standards that are commensurate with the criticality of the tasks they have to perform, the very core of our democracy is in danger."

(emphasis added) 

While detailing many of the vulnerabilities in touchscreen (DRE) voting systems, which more than half the states have outlawed1, the paper specifically discusses optical scan systems: 

"Evaluations of the various optical scanners offered by both vendors followed much the same pattern of the previous voting system components. A patent disregard for cryptographic authentication and integrity checks allows attackers to overwrite a system's firmware with malicious versions and modify or construct election data to be processed by an EMS.

"Physical security measures were also lacking. In particular, the ES&S scanner lock was easily picked with a paper clip during our tests, while the "unpickable" lock on the Sequoia scanner was bypassed by removing a few screws and pulling out the lock cylinder from the scanner's chassis by hand. In both cases, this allows an attacker to access machine internals to potentially execute arbitrary code."

The Computer Security Group at UCSB issued a statement introducing this information, reposted with permission: 

Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems: Are your votes really counted?

 1  |  2  |  3