Why one of America’s top experts is hopeful for…

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Voting machines and elections in general are still vulnerable to hacking, says Matt Blaze, but adoption of risk-limiting audits and software independence gives opportunity for improvement.
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In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, election security quickly became one of the hottest political and cybersecurity research topics. The growing unease that foreign and other adversaries might meddle in our digital voting infrastructure gave way to a growing chorus among some experts to disband digital voting technology altogether and revert to paper ballots.

Six top-tier information security experts issued an alarming report about what they had discovered when they took apart voting machines at DEF CON’s Voting Village last year. They found dozens of severe vulnerabilities in a range of voting equipment, including one in a device from top voting technology supplier Election Systems & Software that could allow an attacker to remotely hijack the system over a network and alter the vote count.

One of those experts, Georgetown University professor and noted cryptographer Matt Blaze, told attendees at this year’s annual Shmoocon conference that in the 20 years he has been studying election security, “it is the hardest security problem I’ve ever encountered.”

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.