Mr. McClees:
In regards to comments made by Virginia Commissioner of Elections, Edgardo Cortés, in his 1 April 2015 message titled, “Re: Interim Report on Voting Equipment Performance, Usage & Certification,” I would like to provide some informed input. I provide this input based upon review of the materials provided by the Virginia Department of Elections, review of materials found on the Internet, and reliance upon my background in computer network system analysis, cyber vulnerability analysis, and technical analysis regarding cyber threats.
I will not address the “alignment” or “calibration” issues best described as operator error or manufacturing deficiencies in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s “2014 November Election Voting Equipment Voting Report.” I will, instead, focus my comments on the most impactful aspect of cyber vulnerabilities that could affect election results. My conclusions parallel those found in the 30 March 2015 message from Matthew Davis, Chief Information Officer, in his report titled, “AVS WinVote Voting Equipment Security Concerns.”
The fundamental exposure presented by the WinVote Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting equipment stems from the fact that computer technology evolves faster than human bureaucracy can mitigate its ill effects. The speed of this technological evolution has been captured in a well-understood maxim called Moore’s Law. The Wikipedia entry for Moore’s Law states, "… over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years.” This has resulted in a doubling of digital capabilities whether that is the case for beneficial medical devices or destructive cyber malware.
The Findings section of the Department of Elections report titled, “Interim Report on Voting Equipment Performance, Usage, & Certification” highlight that the most vulnerable aspect of the WinVote DRE system is its wireless communications capability. Simply put, cyber security experts generally agree that there is no enduring security with any wireless system given the escalation of technological capabilities to intercept signals and that wireless systems provide the most critical aspect for any cyber attack: a venue for access. Scenarios for this kind of attack include, but would not be limited to, attacks launched from a vehicle parked in the parking lot proximate to any polling station and attacks launched from handheld devices within the polling station. The description within Paragraphs 3 and 4 on Page 2 of that report illustrates the capabilities of even inadvertent and spurious wireless signals from “smart phone” devices.
The report’s Findings are myopic, however, since they incorrectly attribute the WinVote DRE machines as the important vulnerability and not in the centralized vote-collecting machine that communicates with all “endpoint” WinVote DRE machines at the polling station. A determined and disciplined cyber attacker will focus on the centralized and wirelessly-connected vote-collecting machine in order to achieve maximum impact for manipulating the outcome of the election or delegitimizing the entire election process. Only a few incidents where the centralized WinVote database for the polling stations were deliberately deleted or corrupted would be required in order to create an immediate and wide-scale backlash from the voting public.
My recommendation is to not only immediately eliminate the use of WinVote DRE machines for any future elections but to also embargo any and all wireless technologies for use by any voting system. The vulnerability that wireless technology presents is too great given the constant exposure that malevolent technological evolution will continue to present.
Very respectfully,
James Hull
King George, Virginia
