<story><title>Hackers at convention to ferret out election system bugs</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-conference/hackers-at-convention-to-ferret-out-election-system-bugs-idUSKBN1KV0ZQ?il=0&amp;utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelt</author><text>The threat model is corrupt election workers, who have unmonitored access to the machines.&lt;p&gt;And if you find problems after the winner is declared? “Only the losing side cares, and they’re just sore losers”&lt;p&gt;Or an adversary could not commit fraud, just trip the fraud alarms in areas their opponent is strong.&lt;p&gt;So it’s very, very difficult to secure.</text></item><item><author>d0lph</author><text>Is it really impossible though? I feel like we could eventually figure it out.</text></item><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the goal here is to secure the electronic voting systems; that&amp;#x27;s impossible, and everyone knows it. The goal is to provide ammunition for getting them decertified.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregmac</author><text>Another threat model is the people who build the software and hardware. How do you ensure:&lt;p&gt;(1) The software is not doing anything nefarious&lt;p&gt;(2) The software toolchain is not modifying the software in (1) to cause it to do something nefarious&lt;p&gt;(3) The software loaded onto the machines is actually the software verified in (1) and compiled by the verified toolchain in (2)&lt;p&gt;(4) The machine doesn&amp;#x27;t have any kind of hardware&amp;#x2F;firmware-based defeat device to trick you into falsely confirming (3)&lt;p&gt;This is essentially the same problem as is outlined in Ken Thompson&amp;#x27;s Reflections on Trusting Trust [1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.archive.ece.cmu.edu&amp;#x2F;~ganger&amp;#x2F;712.fall02&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;p761-thompson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.archive.ece.cmu.edu&amp;#x2F;~ganger&amp;#x2F;712.fall02&amp;#x2F;papers&amp;#x2F;p7...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Hackers at convention to ferret out election system bugs</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cyber-conference/hackers-at-convention-to-ferret-out-election-system-bugs-idUSKBN1KV0ZQ?il=0&amp;utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>michaelt</author><text>The threat model is corrupt election workers, who have unmonitored access to the machines.&lt;p&gt;And if you find problems after the winner is declared? “Only the losing side cares, and they’re just sore losers”&lt;p&gt;Or an adversary could not commit fraud, just trip the fraud alarms in areas their opponent is strong.&lt;p&gt;So it’s very, very difficult to secure.</text></item><item><author>d0lph</author><text>Is it really impossible though? I feel like we could eventually figure it out.</text></item><item><author>jimrandomh</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the goal here is to secure the electronic voting systems; that&amp;#x27;s impossible, and everyone knows it. The goal is to provide ammunition for getting them decertified.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>blacksmith_tb</author><text>I am also not optimistic, but all of those are also failings of traditional voting methods. So one could offer the standard defense of self-driving cars, &amp;quot;it doesn&amp;#x27;t need to be perfect, as long as it&amp;#x27;s better&amp;quot; (but it may never be better...)</text></comment>