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________ Coming April 23! With Special Guest The Honorable John C. Demers Assistant Attorney General "Spy vs. You: Interviewed by: Evan Anderson, CEO, INVNT/IP Reception, Talks & Dinner, starting at 5:30pm April 23, 2020 Lotte New York Palace Hotel
Publisher's Note: Given that this is the week of both Brexit and the US Senate impeachment hearings over whether the president is trying to rig his own re-election (and, if so, whether it requires his removal from office), it just seemed to be the perfect time for a technical dive, in the company of real experts, into the subject of vote rigging and election tampering. Most of us already knew that hacking into election equipment is possible - some of us saw it being demo'd for Congress a few years ago, in a break-in that took just minutes. But for some reason, we tend to accept our officials' assurances that the system has withstood efforts by everyone with the means to actually change vote totals. OK, that's silly. In this week's issue, you'll feel you were onstage with them as cyber expert (and Forbes contributing editor) Jody Westby interviews Harri Hursti, perhaps the world's foremost expert on this subject, who brings a neutral (and cold) view from Finland; and Thomas Curran, longtime SNS member, past CTO of Deutsche Telekom, and CTO of Ory, an identity management system with applications to this problem. Ready to vote on paper again? - mra
Harri Hursti, Hacker & Founding Partner, Nordic Innovation Labs Moderated by Jody R. Westby, CEO, Global Cyber Risk FiRe 2019 Conference Photos 2019 Kris Krug Jody R. Westby: Election security ... Election security has dominated our news for the past two years. We've heard a lot about Russian interference, the Mueller investigation, and also issues with voting machines. The public thinks about election security in two ways: they think about it, one, as the disinformation campaign; and two, they think about it as issues with the voting machines. On the disinformation campaign, that's a very separate issue. It's important to understand that when Russia interfered in our election by using social media and fake news to change a person's mind and get them to vote a certain way, that was illegal. We don't have any proof that anybody changed their mind because of something that Russia put out there, but that's illegal.
L-R: Jody Westby, Harri Hursti, and Thomas Aidan Curran When the Trump campaign used the Cambridge Analytica data to sway people to vote for Trump, that was legal. It's only illegal to use data to try to influence an election if it's a foreign entity. So, that is a distinction that I think is important to understand. We're going to focus our panel today on problems with election security with the voting systems and the voting machines, and we have two terrific experts here. First, to my left, is Harri Hursti, who is the world's foremost expert in election security. Harri has conducted tests and studies on the vulnerabilities of election systems and machines in five countries, including the United States. These studies were done at the request of officials and legislators and policymakers, both at the [states] and federal level here in our country. He starred in Hacking Democracy, which you can find easily on the internet. That movie was a documentary that was nominated for an Emmy award. Harri's been right smack in the middle of all this stuff going on in Washington, and in the US, about election security, so we're really happy we have him with us. And Thomas Curran many of you know because he's been a FiRe guy for a while, but he [also] has deep expertise. He's now currently the CTO of Ory and founder of Ory. But he has deep expertise in identity management and open-source systems and is currently building an open-source platform for identity management and application program interface applications. He's here because he's looked quite a bit at how you could use open-source software for a voting system. So let's start off with the compromises of voting process discussion with Harri. |
