The security theater we are witnessing in our election system boasting the illusion of security via ‘clunky as heck’ and air gap defense will do nothing against the real and sophisticated adversarial landscape that is zeroing in on our democracy

Many members of Isis are not sophisticated attackers. The majority of members do not have a technical background. The UCC is predominately capable of hacking soft targets, such as Twitter accounts, and spreading propaganda or defacing websites

Every conceivable layer of the election process is completely riddled with vulnerabilities, so yes, hacking elections is easy!

A Nation State or Cyber-Mercenary won’t hack e-voting machines one by one. This takes too long and will have minimal impact. Instead, they’ll take an easier approach like spear phishing the manufacturer with malware and poison the voting machine update pre-election and allow the manufacturer to update each individual machine with a self-deleting payload that will target the tabulation process.

Consider all tabulation systems infected by bad actors until a third party, not affiliated with the manufacturer or election officials, proves they are secure.

What do you mean “Should we worry about cyber adversaries getting into state voter registration databases?” They’re already in and selling exfiltrated voter registration data on the dark web! Next election cycle black hats will be selling ‘access as service’.

The collaboration between secretaries of state, election officials and the voting system manufacturers on the matter of enforcing this black box proprietary code secrecy with election systems, is nothing less than the commoditization and monetization of American Democracy

You think an Air Gap is a defense? Sofacy, Stuxnet, Uroburos, AirHopper, BitWhisperer and ProjectSauron…enough said!

Between the black box proprietary code, barebones computers we call voting machines and a mass of completely unqualified election officials, our election system is up for grabs to anybody with even a modest interest and some script kiddie capability. The cyber-kinetic attack surface here is wide open.