As functional. We gave some examples and that immediately caused a firestorm. Sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Joins us again from ann and one of your Research Specialties is computer and Election Security so i wonder professor what you thought of this headline last week from salon, hackers can easily break into Voting Machines, used across the United States. Hackers at a recent las vegas have to conference them in minutes turning them to gaming consoles. Guest unfortunately it is all too true that election infrastructure across the United States remains weekly protected and vulnerable against sophisticated foreign hackers. We have a lot of work to do as a country before 2020 and elections to come. That headline is talking about the devcon Conference Last Week and the students who turned those Voting Machines into voting consuls videogame consoles included some of our Research Students from here in michigan. So Voting Machines unfortunately are a target ripe for the picking. Host you are someone who has personally hacked a voting machine yourself. Why did you do that and what did you learn . Research, icurity and other colleagues have brought many kinds of Voting Machines and other election equipment into the laboratory to test. We play the role of an attacker and see how we way they could misbehave. Single found with every voting machine that has been rigorously tested unfortunately his vulnerabilities where someone could hack in, put Malicious Software on the machine and cause it to be sabotaged or even silently steel votes. Host do you work with Election Officials of the state or federal level to show them what you have learned about how easy it is to hack these machines . Guest yes. Cochairing for the michigan secretary of state commission to advise the state on how to become a national security. Lection i spent frequent trips to washington trying to educate lawmakers. What we need is more resources for the states in terms of funding, in terms of standards so that all states can get up to the forefront of Election Security, but you have that we will need stronger national leadership. On the Election Security question. That is at the root of the problem of why we have such a poor posture for selecting for Election Security today. Host the resources you get for this issue. In michigan. Michigan is a good example because it already has a pretty traut strong posture when it comes to securing elections and thats because in michigan, and about half of states, every single vote is cast by voters on a piece of paper. Retrograde butm it is actually a pretty good defense against Election Hacking because it is something that cant possibly be changed in a cyberattack. What michigan still needs to do as many others do is make sure they are using that paper as a form of Cyber Defense and in order to do that, we have to check enough of the pieces of paper, the paper ballots by having the person inspect them and make sure they agree the Computer Systems that give us our election totals. As long as the paper records and the computer records agree about. Ho one who won host in the 2018 election, how Many Americans cast votes on machines that didnt have that paper backup . Guest unfortunately it was about 25 of americans in 2018 and there are still 14 states that were at least some voters dont have any kind of paper backup at all. That is a problem because it means those states or those voters are relying entirely on the output on these complex computer Voting Machines that have been shown numerous times to have vulnerabilities. Are not asg machines distant from the internet as they may seem. They are behind the scenes much more centralized than they may seem. All of this leads to a situation where we have the potential for sophisticated foreign attackers to get in and sabotage the system. Host what is the argument at this point for not having a paper backup for your voting machine as a state official . Last week on this program there was a caller who called in specifically about this and was concerned about boxes of ballots being found for machines that used paper backups and whether those could be just as easily messed with as a hacker getting into a Computer System. Guest yes. We have had a long history in this country of people tampering with paper ballots in order to interfere in elections. Approachhy a modern isnt just to go back to paper and counted by hand. What Security Experts recommend is having that paper ballot box but also right in front of the voter scanning the ballot into a computer and that is one of the most common voting systems in the country today is called is both aan. Paper record and an electronic record that we can check in a postelection audit to make sure it reflects the same winner. That is much stronger than having either paper by itself or electronic records by themselves. You need both. Lots of people on the ground and sophisticated hac getting into the Computer System and those would have to coordinate in a way that cause the same tampering in the record. That would just be a remarkable kind of attack well beyond anything weve seen. Today i dont think there are many serious people left who would still argue we dont need a paper trail with elections. That is pretty much done. Its a question of resources. Host and with us for the next 15 minutes to answer your questions about Election Security. Less than 15 months until election day 2020. Phone lines, republicans call in at 2027488001 2027488000 in the eastern or central time zones. Are in27488001 if you the mountain or pacific time zone. If i havent confused you enough, we will let you know. We will hear from frank in long island, new york. Caller good morning. Wondering how come they trailenforce more paper and people can really check their real results. In the caribbean, the dominican corruption a lot of and there is no way to go back and check those for the corruption that played out in the voting day. Guest i think you are getting at a very excellent point. What we need to secure elections and give everyone confidence is to make sure that every voter has a piece of paper that they can see and verify recording their votes. Their votes as they intend. Then, the process of auditing those votes needs to be as trans errant as possible. For way too long, elections in america have been based on faith , on people having faith that the operators of the system, the Election Officials are doing their jobs and taking every necessary precaution. It doesnt have to be that way. We need to engineer elections so they are based on evidence, evidence any skeptical voter can see and check to know the election is free from any kind of interference. Pennsylvania dale, is next. Good morning. Caller good morning. How about using our Chain Technology for security . Guest black chain. Block chain is good for some things. You might know about bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. It is based on block Chain Technology that essentially gives you a way for everyone to agree on what transactions have gone to the system without having any centralbank or Central Authority announcer washington journal live every day at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. You can watch this and more at cspan. Org. 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