Symantec Shows How Easy It Is To Hack An Election

Symantec demonstrates the security vulnerabilities around electronic voting systems.

By Meghan Ottolini

September 29, 2016, 04:36 PM EDT

Here’s a scary idea: someone casting his or her vote for president, but in your name. Or how about: someone gains entry to an electronic voting booth and prints out false results, and hands them into officials. Unfortunately, according to Symantec, these idea could easily become reality.

Symantec simulated a variety of methods that malicious hackers could use to access modern electronic voting booths and disrupt political elections.

The first two types of attacks Symantec identified focused on the hardware used in voting booths. Hackers, for example, could modify the code on registration ID chip cards issued at voting locations.

Hackers could either ’vote more than once, or perhaps, hardcode, for the rest of the day, your name on that card, that gets used,’ according to Senior Vice President Samir Kapuria.

’Some of these devices use a cartridge, which is no more than a glorified USB stick,’ he continued. ’They use that cartridge at the end of the day for volunteer poll workers to take all of that information out of one of these voting systems and into a tallying database.’

Someone with malicious intent could tamper with the cartridge to impact the tally for that booth.

’Without a paper receipt of everyone that voted that day, that could really disrupt or nullify one of the systems and all of the votes that were associated with it,’ Kapuria said.

Someone could also put malware on one of the cartridges and essentially infect the whole voting system network at a location.

The third threat Symantec found is actually misinformation. That would be the case of a hacker distributing false or misleading data regarding voting totals to major media outlets, which could change whether or not people decide to actually go to the polls on election day.

The good news is that there are solutions for these threats.

’It starts with defining a standard,’ Kapuria said. ’There’s such a variance or quilt of these systems being dispersed among states and counties that we need to really create a standard.’

’A lot of the security technology that’s out there can be applied to this,’ he said. ’Everything from endpoint technology, because these are nothing more than computers, to network technology.’

https://www.crn.com/news/security/video/300082271/symantec-shows-how-easy-it-is-to-hack-an-election.htm

Although the author has a lefty bent, this article has tons and tons of good diggable info on voting systems technology companies and deep state connections.

The genesis of America’s corrupted computerized election system.

By Jennifer Cohn @jennycohn1

Date: 2017

Note: This is a draft article I started writing in 2017 and never finished. But upon re-reading it, it’s quite informative “as is,” so I’m posting it. I hope people find it useful.

Background

From 2002 until 2009, two voting machine vendors dominated United States elections: Diebold Election Systems (renamed “Premier in 2007) and Election Systems & Software (“ES&S”).

By 2004, “Diebold control[led] about 50 percent of the electronic voting market…” http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/30/technology/election_diebold/

In 2009, Wired reported that “ES&S systems were “present in 43 states and “‘utilized in counting approximately 50% of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections,’” according to the company’s website.” https://www.wired.com/2009/09/diebold-sells/

In 2009, Diebold Inc. sold its elections division, Diebold Election Systems, to ES&S. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/09/diebold_inc_sells_off_its _elec.html

In 2010, the Department of Justice filed an anti-trust suit against ES&S & forced it to divest, stating that the combined company (ES&S + Diebold) provided more than 70 % of US voting equipment.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-key-divestitureelection-systems-softwarepremier-election

Later that year, Diebold purportedly dissolved and its assets were split between ES&S and Dominion Voting, which was at that time a relatively unknown Canadian company. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-voting-technology/

The same year, Dominion bought Sequoia (20% of US voting equipment) as well. http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7906

As of 2017, the rough breakdown of voting machine equipment in the U.S. was approximately:

ES&S (including Diebold assets) 44%

Dominion (including Diebold and Sequoia assets): 37%

Hart: 11%

Unisyn 2%

Other 6%

https://trustthevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2017-whartonoset_industryreport.pdf [Appendix A]

1. In this thread, I focus on ES&S & Diebold.

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1. Election Systems & Software, LLC.

2. Two brothers from Nebraska, Bob and Todd Urosevich, founded ES&S in the late 1970’s under the name DataMark. http://www.omaha.com/columnists/kelly/kelly-this-omaha-company-shaped-howamerica-counts-its-election/article_459030e0-b522-5a7b-b953-1e6c958e5439.html

1. Per the Omaha Herald, the Urosevich Brothers received funding in 1979 from billionaire William Ahmanson and changed the company name from DataMark to American Information Systems (“AIS”), which was the precursor of ES&S. http://www.omaha.com/columnists/kelly/kelly-this-omaha-company-shapedhow-america-counts-its-election/article_459030e0-b522-5a7b-b9531e6c958e5439.html

1. Mother Jones says the funding and name change to AIS happened in 1984. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/diebolds-political-machine/

1. Bob Urosevich was president of AIS (ES&S precursor), but left the company in 1995 to start another Omaha company called Imark (Global precursor). https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/premierdiebold/accuvote-tsx/

1. Todd Urosevich remained at AIS (ES&S precursor) as vice president. http://www.omaha.com/columnists/kelly/kelly-this-omaha-company-shapedhow-america-counts-its-election/article_459030e0-b522-5a7b-b9531e6c958e5439.html

1. I-Mark was later acquired by Global where Bob Urosevich was made president. https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/premierdiebold/accuvote-tsx/

1. In 2002, Global was acquired by Diebold, Inc. and renamed “Diebold Election Systems.” https://www.wired.com/2004/03/how-e-voting-threatens-democracy/

1. Bob Urosevich remained as president of Diebold Election Systems. https://www.wired.com/2004/04/diebold-may-face-criminal-charges/

1. Thus, the voting machine giants known as ES&S and Diebold (later renamed Premier) both have direct ties to the Urosevich brothers (though Bob has apparently retired). http://www.omaha.com/columnists/kelly/kelly-this-omaha-company-shapedhow-america-counts-its-election/article_459030e0-b522-5a7b-b9531e6c958e5439.html.

https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/the-corruption-of-americas-computerized-elections-3d5b77124ebe