Hackers how found vulnerabilities in election machines that will be used in 2024. Can we trust that our elections are secure?

From Just the News. Hackers at a conference last weekend found numerous vulnerabilities in election machines while the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) confirmed that current voting systems to be used in the November election have not been tested by third parties for vulnerabilities. …

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Who is praying on the wall?

At the annual DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas this past weekend, hackers hacked into election equipment from various manufacturers, including voting machines, e-pollbooks, and ballot tabulators, according to Politico. …

DEF CON Voting Village co-founder Harri Hursti told Politico on Saturday that there were “multiple pages” worth of vulnerabilities found in election machines, which was similar to previous years and will be detailed in a full report in the coming weeks.

“If you don’t think this kind of place is running 24/7 in China, Russia, you’re kidding yourselves,” Hursti said. “We are here only for two and a half days, and we find stuff…it would be stupid to assume that the adversaries don’t have absolute access to everything.” …

Politico also reported that most of the machines tested at DEF CON “are used in at least one jurisdiction around the U.S.”

One state in particular has had election machine vulnerabilities for the past three years that will not be fixed before November.

In June 2023, a nearly 2-year-old report was finally made public arising from a Georgia lawsuit that showed Dominion voting machines had significant vulnerabilities, which led the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue a public advisory in 2022 based on the findings. …

However, Georgia election officials said last year that the machines won’t be updated until after the 2024 elections because it’s such a massive undertaking. …

EAC Vice Chair Donald Palmer told Just the News on Wednesday that Georgia in particular has had issues updating its Dominion Voting Systems equipment due to a lack of resources. While the EAC tested and updated the Dominion machine, Georgia is having a “funding and timing issue” with it, Palmer said. The state needs to allow for “access to the machines for a length of time.”

Regarding last weekend’s hackers conference, Palmer mentioned that “the systems that are being tested at DEF CON are not the frontline systems.”

The voting systems at DEF CON are not updated or “certified to EAC standards” as they are “not supported by manufacturers,” Palmer said. …

Currently, for voting systems to receive EAC certification, they go through “penetration testing,” where they ensure that “any known vulnerability has been resolved,” Palmer said. This testing is only for voting machines and ballot tabulators.

EAC certification of election equipment is voluntary, but even if it isn’t “formally required by states,” the equipment eventually goes through EAC testing on the manufacturing side, he said.

However, Palmer explained that the EAC doesn’t currently test to find vulnerabilities in the voting systems that are being used. “Congress is looking at setting up a system where independent researchers conduct vulnerability testing” annually, providing results “back to the manufacturer and the EAC,” and done with the “latest, frontline voting systems,” Palmer said. …

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(Excerpt from Just the News. Photo Credit: KOMUnews – Columbia polls run smoothly without long waits, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73077046)