(This article is written jointly with my colleague Kyle Jamieson, who specializes in wireless networks.) [See also: The myth of the hacker-proof voting machine] The ES&S model DS200 optical-scan voting machine has a cell-phone modem that it uses to upload election-night results from the voting machine to the “county central” canvassing computer. We know it’s […]
My testimony before the House Subcommittee on IT
September 29, 2016 by
I was invited to testify yesterday before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Information Technology, at a hearing entitled “Cybersecurity: Ensuring the Integrity of the Ballot Box.” My written testimony is available here. My 5-minute opening statement went as follows: My name is Andrew Appel. I am Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. […]
Security against Election Hacking – Part 2: Cyberoffense is not the best cyberdefense!
August 18, 2016 by
State and county election officials across the country employ thousands of computers in election administration, most of them are connected (from time to time) to the internet (or exchange data cartridges with machines that are connected). In my previous post I explained how we must audit elections independently of the computers, so we can trust the […]
Security against Election Hacking – Part 1: Software Independence
August 17, 2016 by
There’s been a lot of discussion of whether the November 2016 U.S. election can be hacked. Should the U.S. Government designate all the states’ and counties’ election computers as “critical cyber infrastructure” and prioritize the “cyberdefense” of these systems? Will it make any difference to activate those buzzwords with less than 3 months until the […]
A response to the National Association of Secretaries of State
August 9, 2016 by
Election administration in the United States is largely managed state-by-state, with a small amount of Federal involvement. This generally means that each state’s chief election official is that state’s Secretary of State. Their umbrella organization, the National Association of Secretaries of State, consequently has a lot of involvement in voting issues, and recently issued a […]
