REUTERS

Election cybersecurity

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As if the American election process isn’t Byzantine enough with local, state, and federal rules and regulations, we have multiple ways of collecting, tallying, and reporting votes in 9,000 jurisdictions throughout the United States including optical scan, direct recording electronic systems (DRE), ballot marking devices, and punch card voting systems, early voting, absentee voting, and provisional ballots.

According to the NYT, the Obama administration is weighing new steps to bolster the security of the voting process against cyberthreat, “including whether to designate the electronic ballot-casting system for November’s elections as “critical infrastructure”, said Jeh Johnson, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.

Concerns about electronic voting aren’t new, of course, but overt cyberattacks are increasing. While the origins of the various attacks, including the DNC and OPM aren’t officially confirmed, there’s no denying the uptick in hacking decidedly unsecure and outdated computers and software.

Remember the 2000 presidential election and our obsession with hanging chads? A national commission was created in 2002 and Congress allocated more than $3 billion USD in grants to help officials upgrade voting processes and equipment. “But there is more to do,” said Johnson and “we should carefully consider whether our election system, our election process is critical infrastructure, like the financial sector, like the power grid.”

Is declaring the U.S. electronic ballot-casting systems as “critical infrastructure” an overreaction by the Feds? Great piece by Politico explaining that to date, there is not a singular national body that regulates the security on Election Day as it’s a process decided state-by-state. Technical standards for voting are created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Election Assistance Commission but the guidelines are not mandatory. That’s right – the security of your vote is based on voluntary standards.

A review of polling machines shows aging voting technologies impacting the majority of America including but not limited to the swing states of Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Expect election cybersecurity concerns to escalate while the clock ticks down to November 8th.

Photo: Reuters



Cybersecurity threats: squirrels, weasels, and martens – oh my.

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Cybersecurity has been in the news lately ranging from Iranian hackers gaining access to a dam in upstate New York, ransomware against the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, data breaches involving federal agencies including OPM and the IRS, as well as private companies such as Sony Pictures Entertainment, Home Depot, and Target to name a few.

While humans are accountable for most of the hacks, the U.S. government continues to do battle with elusive creatures which repeatedly attack the nation’s infrastructure and power supply: Sciurus carolinensis a/k/a the common grey squirrel.

“I don’t think paralysis [of the electrical grid] is more likely by cyberattack than by natural disaster. And frankly the number-one threat experienced to date by the US electrical grid is squirrels,” said John C. Inglis, former Deputy Director, National Security Agency.

To date, more than 700 power outages can be directly attributed to the horribly adorable furry rodent followed by a smattering of attacks by birds, raccoons, and snakes.

Mind you, they’re also causing the near extinction of the UK red squirrel but that’s for a different post.

Not to be outdone, an errant weasel or marten brought down the world’s largest particle accelerator known as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, located near Geneva, Switzerland. The decidedly singed creature apparently chewed through the wiring and took out CERN for at least a week.

Admittedly, this is not the first time an animal has brought CERN to a halt. In 2009, a bird “accidentally” dropped a baguette on the electrical system resulting in a slight disruption of service. Unlike the weasel, the bird survived.

Who needs cyberbombs when a squirrel will do?