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Cybersecurity Threats to U.S. Elections
Alex Halderman - University of Michigan
Monday, April 9, 2018, 11:00-11:59 am Calendar
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Abstract
Strengthening election cybersecurity is essential for safeguarding American democracy, and it’s an increasingly urgent task. Despite 15 years of research demonstrating critical security weaknesses, most of the country continues to use vulnerable electronic voting machines, and the landscape of threats from cybercriminals and nation-state attackers has grown increasingly hostile.
 
In this talk, I will explain how cyberattacks on voting infrastructure threaten the integrity of U.S. elections. Sophisticated attackers can infiltrate electronic voting machines and silently alter results in swing states, potentially changing the outcome of a national election. Such attacks do not require voting machines to be connected to the Internet, and the technical capabilities are well within reach for hostile foreign governments. To illustrate this threat, I will demonstrate an attack on a real voting machine of a type still used in 20 states, including, until recently, Maryland.
 
Researchers have developed practical safeguards that can robustly defend our elections, but only a handful of states have deployed them so far, due to a lack of resources and political will. Fortunately, Congress recently appropriated $380M in new funding for the states—including $7M for Maryland—to strengthen election security.  I’ll explain how Maryland and other states can use this funding wisely, and what computer scientists and other citizens can do to help.
Bio

Alex Halderman is Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Michigan. His research spans computer and network security, applied cryptography, security measurement, censorship resistance, and electronic voting, as well as the interaction of technology with politics and international affairs. His recent projects include ZMap, Let’s Encrypt, and the TLS Logjam and DROWN vulnerabilities.  Prof. Halderman has performed numerous security evaluations of real-world voting systems, both in the U.S. and around the world. After the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he advised recount initiatives in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in an effort to help detect and deter cyberattacks, and in 2017 he testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee about cybersecurity threats to election infrastructure. He was named by Popular Science as one of the “brightest young minds reshaping science, engineering, and the world.”

This talk is organized by Jonathan Katz