Voter vulnerabilities: Cybersecurity risks impact national elections
The outcome of elections have an enormous impact on the political and cultural landscape of any democratic society.
New technologies are helping to ensure the accuracy of elections and as such, electronic voting is starting to become a bigger part of the Australian voting experience. But as with so many other industries, the more we digitise and find ways to heighten consumer experiences, the more opportunities we create for cybercriminals to exploit the gaps in the system.
In February this year, it was revealed that the Australian Government was the victim of a sophisticated cyber attack. IT networks at Parliament House were disrupted, and while the occurrence was caught, and no data was breached or compromised, it does raise questions about the safety and security of the voting process in Australia. With the New South Wales (NSW) state election behind us, and a federal election taking place this weekend, it is important to understand how government departments are attempting to defend the voting process from cyber threats, and what learnings Australia businesses might be able to take away from this process.
Digital dangers
In April this year, a Deloitte review commissioned by the Department of Home and Affairs undertook a major review of electoral cybersecurity. The review noted that as electoral systems have become more digitised, attacks on electoral systems are increasing. The review raises concerns that hackers might find a weak point to exploit in the system, and use it to "sow doubt in the security and integrity" of Australian democratic processes.
The security of digital voting systems has become a hot topic in recent years, and while the majority of Australians still flock in person to polling booths across the country, electronic voting is offered in extenuating circumstances where an individual is unable to visit a physical location. In the NSW state election earlier this year, thousands of voters reportedly took up this option, fore-going their democracy sausage sizzle, and trading in their pencil and paper to vote online.
For the third time running, the iVote system was rolled out to Australian voters, but the lead up to the big day was not all together smooth. Two weeks out from the election, the NSW Electoral Commission confirmed a critical defect had been found in the e-voting system that could potentially allow vote manipulation, validating the concerns of the Deloitte review.
In this instance, a cryptographic trapdoor allowed malicious actors to change votes without being detected. The potential for interference occurs at the stage when votes are being randomised to ensure they cannot be connected to individual voters. The detection was a concern, however for this to have a negative impact on the results of the election, a bad actor would have to gain access to the physical machine that the votes were being counted on, and have all the right credentials and codes to alter the software.
Counting the risks
Despite these concerns, digital voting is not the only vulnerability in the election process – traditional pencil and paper ballots also have their flaws. While analogue voting may seem more secure than logging in online, votes still need to be counted, which introduces an element of human error. Counting and determining the results of both digital and static votes remains a vulnerable point of the democratic process because at some point in the counting process, some form of software will be used, even if it is only to calculate numbers.
A recent review of the US democratic voting system by the Malwarebytes Labs team found this to be the most vulnerable stage of the process. As hackers become more sophisticated, breaches at this counting and decrypting stage could be the way to access the records, either to alter them to potentially change the outcome of the vote, or to on sell the personally identifiable information (PII) that they collect from voters.
Securing the nation
When looking to identify and mitigate the risks of potential vulnerabilities in the voting process, it is vital to ensure that any digitisation process or platform introduced to the public undergoes rigorous testing and review before being opened to the public.
Such is the case with the iVote system defect that was made public during the NSW State election in March. Earlier in the year, the NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) invited individuals with a private or academic interest to review aspects of the iVote system source code prior to the election. In addition to its own private testing, these measures helped to identify the potential risks, and allowed the NSWEC team to put processes in motion that would mitigate the risks of any potential exploitation.
After the votes have been cast, any machine that is being used to count and decrypt voting data should be secured against tampering, and have software running that actively monitors for and reports any abnormal activity. As a further security measure, these machines should remain air-gapped during the voting process to create an extra barrier against cybercriminals. While even air-gapped computers are not 100 percent safe, an attacker would require proximity to the machine to have an influence.
With a national election only days away, security is top of mind for us all. Taking stock of the learnings from recent local and international elections will allow us to look forward, and instigate changes to our existing systems. These changes will help minimise the threat of election fraud or wider attacks on our national voting systems, while simultaneously leveraging technology to make the process more convenient.
By securing infrastructure such as voting apparatus, testing the systems we deploy and being more generally aware of what the risks are, we can all feel safer knowing that one of the most vital actions we take as a country is protected. These are key insights and process that businesses can also learn from. Implementing similar checks and protection measures will help to protect any data collected or stored in Australia.
