CISA highlights voting systems’ security vulnerabilities

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued a warning that 16 or more states have been leveraging Dominion Voting Systems with software flaws that could present hacking risks, according to The Associated Press. No threat actor has so far exploited the nine reported vulnerabilities, said the advisory, which also recommended states to promptly apply mitigation efforts, as well as stronger "defensive measures to reduce the risk of exploitation of these vulnerabilities." Digital technology poses significant security risks in vote recording but there has not been uniform adherence to protections necessitated by such risks, noted University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman. "These vulnerabilities, for the most part, are not ones that could be easily exploited by someone who walks in off the street, but they are things that we should worry could be exploited by sophisticated attackers, such as hostile nation states, or by election insiders, and they would carry very serious consequences," said Halderman.