Shoring Up the 2020 Election: Secure Vote Tallies Aren't the Problem

With the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election coming up in just two months, cybersecurity concerns are taking center stage for average citizens and politicians. That said, the likelihood of election results being impacted by an attack are slim, security researchers say. The focus should be on other...

U.S. Offers Reward of $10M for Info Leading to Discovery of Election Meddling

The U.S. government is concerned about foreign interference in the 2020 election, so much so that it will offer a reward of up to $10 million for anyone providing information that could lead to tracking down potential cybercriminals aiming to sabotage the November vote. The U.S. Department of...

Black Hat 2020: In a Turnaround, Voting Machine Vendor Embraces Ethical Hackers

Voting machine-maker Election Systems & Software ES&S has formally announced a vulnerability disclosure policy, Wednesday, during a Black Hat USA 2020 session. The move, which comes with the U.S. presidential elections looming in November, shows that voting-machine vendors are beginning to take t...

Black Hat 2020: Scaling Mail-In Voting Spawns Broad Challenges

Security researcher Matt Blaze opened Black Hat 2020 with a call-to-arms for cybersecurity experts, asking them during his keynote to leverage their passion for election security to help secure the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, which will likely be a mostly vote-by-mail affair. “This...

Georgia’s Failure Shows How Not to Run an Election in the Pandemic

Limiting in-person polling sites makes it both harder to vote and more dangerous...

Security Analysis of the Democracy Live Online Voting System

New research: "Security Analysis of the Democracy Live Online Voting System": Abstract: Democracy Live's OmniBallot platform is a web-based system for blank ballot delivery, ballot marking, and optionally online voting. Three states -- Delaware, West Virginia, and New Jersey -- recently announced...

Gene Spafford on Internet Voting

Good interview...

Online Voting Has Worked So Far. That Doesn’t Mean It's Safe

Proponents of mobile and internet voting point to its uneventful track record. That's not good enough...

The Weird Partisan Math of Vote-by-Mail

Research says that expanding mail-in voting doesn’t help Democrats. So why are Republicans so afraid of it?...

Vote by Mail Isn't Perfect. But It's Essential in a Pandemic

Despite Donald Trump's invective, the spread of Covid-19 has made the expansion of absentee voting critical...

Internet Voting in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is considered allowing for Internet voting. I have joined a group of security experts in a letter opposing the bill. Cybersecurity experts agree that under current technology, no practically proven method exists to securely, verifiably, or privately return voted materials over the...

Urban Dictionary: Bypass voting restriction due to HTTP Header Injection

It is possible to bypass the voting restriction by adding a specially crafted HTTP-Header. The underlying algorithm uses the ip address to restirct the voting of a user. However, by manipulating the IP-Adress via adding the HTTP-Header "X-Forwarded-For" it is possible to vote a entry up or down...

A week in security (February 17 – 23)

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs, we highlighted the benefits and concerns of identity-as-a-service IDaaS, an identity management scheme deployed from the cloud; reported on scammers and squatters taking advantage of Rudy Giuliani’s Twitter typos; and gave a high-level overview of RobbinHood, the...

Breaking Down Election Security: Points of Vulnerability and Solutions

The importance of cybersecurity in the context of the democratic process has become undeniable—with nation-state hackers setting their sights on elections as effective vehicles for attack, disruption, and social unrest. Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, testified to Congress that U.S...

Voatz Internet Voting App Is Insecure

This paper describes the flaws in the Voatz Internet voting app: "The Ballot is Busted Before the Blockchain: A Security Analysis of Voatz, the First Internet Voting Application Used in U.S. Federal Elections." Abstract: In the 2018 midterm elections, West Virginia became the first state in the...

Researchers: Hackers Can Seize Control of Ballots Cast Using the Voatz Voting App

Security researchers have found key flaws in a mobile voting app that some states plan to use in the 2020 election that can allow hackers to launch both client- and server-side attacks that can easily manipulate or even delete someone’s vote, as well as prevent a reliable audit from taking place...

CVE-2020-8989

In the Voatz application 2020-01-01 for Android, the amount of data transmitted during a single voter's vote depends on the different lengths of the metadata across the available voting choices, which makes it easier for remote attackers to discover this voter's choice by sniffing the network. Fo...

CVE-2020-8988

The Voatz application 2020-01-01 for Android allows only 100 million different PINs, which makes it easier for attackers after using root access to make a copy of the local database to discover login credentials and voting history via an offline brute-force approach...

Design/Logic Flaw

The Voatz application 2020-01-01 for Android allows only 100 million different PINs, which makes it easier for attackers after using root access to make a copy of the local database to discover login credentials and voting history via an offline brute-force approach...

CVE-2020-8989

In the Voatz application 2020-01-01 for Android, the amount of data transmitted during a single voter's vote depends on the different lengths of the metadata across the available voting choices, which makes it easier for remote attackers to discover this voter's choice by sniffing the network. Fo...