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Electronic Voting
Systems Fail California’s Security Testing
Between June and July of 2007 voting machines made by Hart InterCivic Voting Systems were put through extensive testing by the state of California. The 'Red Team' was comprised of computer scientists, security experts and white-hat hackers and led by UC Davis computer scientist Matthew Bishop. The team was tasked with examining all electronic voter systems for security vulnerabilities. They were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions There were multiple vulnerabilities in the Hart InterCivic system. A partial list of some of the security risks follows. The team's sixteen page report is available in PDF format 1. Election Management System. The testers did not test the Windows systems on which the Hart election management software was installed because Hart does not configure the operating system or provide a default configuration. Hart software security settings provide a restricted, Hart-defined environment that the testers bypassed, allowing them to run the Hart software in a standard Windows environment. They also found an undisclosed account on the Hart software that an attacker who penetrated the host operating system could exploit to gain unauthorized access to the Hart election management database.2. eScan. The testers were able to overwrite the eScan firmware. The team also accessed menus that should have been locked with passwords. Other attacks allowed the team to alter vote totals; these attacks used ordinary objects. The team, in cooperation with the source code review team, was able to issue administrative commands to the eScan. 3. JBC. The team developed a surreptitious device that caused the JBC to authorize access codes without poll worker intervention. The team verified that the mobile ballot box (MBB) card can be altered during an election. The team also found that post-election safeguards to prevent the altered data on a tampered MBB card from being counted can be easily bypassed. 4. eSlate. The testers were able to remotely capture the audio from a voting session on an eSlate with audio enabled, thereby providing an attack that violates voter privacy. The team was also able to force an eSlate to produce multiple barcodes after printing “BALLOT ACCEPTED” on the VVPAT records. This could cause a county that used bar code readers to read the VVPAT to produce erroneous vote totals
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