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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTop Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb4ezy/top-voting-machine-vendor-admits-it-installed-remote-access-software-on-systems-sold-to-states?utm_campaign=sharebuttonThe nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.
In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.
(snip)
ES&S is the top voting machine maker in the country, a position it held in the years 2000-2006 when it was installing pcAnywhere on its systems. The company's machines were used statewide in a number of states, and at least 60 percent of ballots cast in the US in 2006 were tabulated on ES&S election-management systems. Its not clear why ES&S would have only installed the software on the systems of a small number of customers and not all customers, unless other customers objected or had state laws preventing this.
The company told Wyden it stopped installing pcAnywhere on systems in December 2007, after the Election Assistance Commission, which oversees the federal testing and certification of election systems used in the US, released new voting system standards. Those standards required that any election system submitted for federal testing and certification thereafter could contain only software essential for voting and tabulation. Although the standards only went into effect in 2007, they were created in 2005 in a very public process during which the security of voting machines was being discussed frequently in newspapers and on Capitol Hill.
(snip)
Wyden told Motherboard that installing remote-access software and modems on election equipment is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.
(end snip)
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Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (Original Post)
deminks
Jul 2018
OP
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)1. So it took almost two years for ES&S to admit
what the Hacker convention proved two years ago and again last year.
deminks
(11,013 posts)2. They have been denying it. Article says they don't know why the company changed its tune.
Wellstone ruled
(34,661 posts)3. Well,there are video's out there showing how easy
it was to hack these junkers. One Guy used his Cell,took him seconds to spin the machine to what ever he wanted.
triron
(21,984 posts)4. Mueller or someone at FBI needs to subpoena them.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)5. Thank god it does not appear to have impacted elections in 2006 or 2008. We did better with it.