State of California review of Sequoia source code finds “significant security weaknesses throughout the Sequoia system.”
The California Secretary of State commissioned a University of California, Berkeley, board to review the source code as part of a “bottom-up review” of state electronic voting system.
An executive summary of the Sequoia system findings shows, “The nature of these weaknesses raised serious questions as to whether the Sequoia software can be relied upon to protect the integrity of elections. Every software mechanism for transmitting election results and every software mechanism for updating software lacks reliable measures to detect or prevent tampering. We detail these weaknesses, and their implications, in Chapters 3 and 4.
“In certain cases, audit mechanisms may be able to detect and recover from some attacks, depending on county-specific procedures; other attacks may be more difficult to detect after-the-fact even with very rigorous audits,” the executive summary said.
“Many of the most significant vulnerabilities we found – those likely to be especially useful to an attacker seeking to alter election results – arise from four pervasive structural weaknesses, discussed in detail in Chapter 3.” (Emphasis added)
Source:
1. votingsystems.cdn.sos.ca.gov/oversight/sequoia-doc-final.pdf
1. Why did CISA certify this software over the years, knowing this?
2. Has CISA verified that those problems California detected in 2007 were subsequently addressed?
3. The Sequoia system findings are unequivocal and absolute, calling “every software system” severely problematic. Do these findings suggest that the systems were designed to have those weaknesses?
4. What did the findings mean about “four pervasive structural weaknesses” that would benefit “an attacker seeking to alter election results”?
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