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    October 17, 2011

US Lab Says Electronic Voting Machines Easy to Hack

   Kane Farabaugh | Chicago

   As the primary election season gains momentum in the United States in
   early 2012, voters will head to the polls to cast votes for their
   preferred candidates. About 30 percent of Americans will use electronic
   voting machines, all the way through the general election next
   November. A group of researchers at Argonne National Laboratory outside
   of Chicago, Illinois have determined that those electronic voting
   machines can be easily manipulated, casting doubt on their security and
   effectiveness.
   Jon Warner's full time job at Argonne National Laboratory is testing
   the security strength of the world's most sensitive areas.
   "We do international nuclear safeguards," said Warner. "We break into
   real security systems."
   His part-time job is changing the course of fictitious elections, on
   real electronic voting machines that more than a quarter of American
   voters use.
   "These machines are modularly designed, so you have a touch screen,
   that's a module, and when I press the touch screen, that sends a signal
   to the CPU," he said. "Well, the CPU is going to respond back with
   something. All I did was intercept that communication flow. If I like
   the vote, fine let it go through. If I don't, change it."
   Warner manipulates voting information on the electronic machines using
   a small, custom-made remote control device.
   If it sounds simple, that's because it is.
   "We believe that a very resourceful 12 to 13-year-old would be able to
   essentially produce these alien electronics that can hijack the
   machine," said Roger Johnston.
   Roger Johnston heads up Argonne's Vulnerability Assessment Team.
   "I think our view of the voting machines we've looked at is that there
   really isn't much security thought put into these devices," he said.
   Johnston says security concerns are not isolated to the way the
   machines are made.
   "Often the warehouses where these machines are stored have fairly weak
   security, but almost universally, these machines are transported by
   third party low bid trucking companies, where there's no background
   checks on these individuals," said Johnston. "Often the machines arrive
   at a polling place and there's no one to sign for them or to take
   responsibility for their oversight. So there's often quite a period of
   time when these machines could be tampered with."
   Johnston's group tested two different electronic voting machines out of
   about 12 different models.
   "We think that the kind of attacks that we've demonstrated on these two
   machines would probably work on quite a number of other voting
   machines, but we don't know that for sure - we simply haven't had the
   opportunity to try," he said.
   The 2000 presidential election was decided by several hundred manually
   entered votes in the southern state of Florida. The recount of those
   votes, and problems in how the ballots were marked, fueled a drive to
   have more electronic voting machines for the next election.
   Johnston says now, the closer the outcome of an election, the greater
   the role of just one electronic voting machine.
   "In the 2008 senatorial race in Minnesota, Al Franken won by 312 votes
   - that's one voting machine," he said. "Tampering just a little bit
   with just one voting machine could potentially have swung that election
   the other way."
   Johnston says the problem is not isolated to the United States. The
   push for faster calculation of election results worldwide is driving up
   the demand for electronic voting machines. If those machines are not
   secure, Johnston says, it could cast doubt on the integrity of the
   election.