U.S. Voting Machines are Installed with Remote-Access Software – Confirms Manufacturer

Right now, the primary thought engulfing everyone's mind is election hacking, courtesy - the much-talked-about controversy of 2016 Presidential election. However, Motherboard suggests in their recent report that the topic is not new at all.

An article was published by the outlet, on Tuesday, where it claims that they have got a letter which was sent by the ES&S (Election Systems and Software) to the Senator R.Wyden (D-OR) in the month of April. ES&S is a company that is responsible for manufacturing most of the voting machines which are used in U.S. Election Systems and Software reportedly admitted in the letter that they have sold pcAnywhere equipped EMSs (Election Management Systems) to only a few of its customers between the year 2000 and 2006. pcAnywhere is a software program that is normally used by the system administrators to remotely access computers.

The Software was actually not in voting machines, but in terminals of EMS (Election Management System) which are used to handle voting machines for doing things such as formatting ballots or configuring the scanning equipment. As per ES&S, those systems are configured for only allowing customer to initiate the link up with their support staff as final troubleshooting option as published on July 17, 2018, by register.co.uk.

ES&S President, Tom Burt, says that before inception of [Election Assistance Commission] testing and certification program and on request of customers', ES&S had provided the remote connection software, pcAnywhere, on EMS workstation to limited number of users from the year 2000 to 2006.

Credibility of Election Systems and Software was also questioned by the report, further to the article by NY Times in the early part of this year, Election Systems and Software are quoted as saying that no one in the company had "any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software."

Election Management Systems as well as the voting machines are by no means supposed to get connected to internet due to one clear reason: the systems will be vulnerable to hacking once online. Wyden, on Wednesday, told Senate Rules Committee regarding ES&S situation, "The only way to make this worse would be to leave unguarded ballot boxes in Moscow and Beijing."

The basic function of EMS is to count the official election results along with programming the voting machines, whenever required. EMS is not used for casting actual ballots.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/26/2018