Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now, Google has no credible open competitor to Android, and not for lack of trying. If Android wants to be the Windows to iPhone's Mac, it will have to get serious about security, or be swept away by the competitors which will inevitably emerge. I also want to say that voting machines run unsupported Android builds. If Google is derelict in that duty... well, that's a much bigger deal than some compromised Goog…
I never heard that about voting machines. Do you have a source for that? I'm not sure why that's more surprising than hearing that they run Windows XP...
http://www.dos.pa.gov/VotingElections/OtherServicesEvents/Pa...
The Android device in use is the EA Tablet. The certification tests are listed in "EA TABLET FOR ANDROID WITH JELLYBEAN 4.2.1 ELECTRONIC Test Report," dating from 2013.
To be fair, it's probably the best of the horrible lot in security, but that ain't saying much.
For example, the iVotronic systems contain a readily accessible compact flash card right on the top, which stores the election returns. Demonstration machines are set up in each county, so I went to see one in person. Unsurprisingly, the demo machine's card wasn't even covered with a tamper-evident seal.
The devices, including the compact flash cards and the PEBs, are reused from year to year because the legally required certification for the device is very narrow. As the demo machine compact flash cards and PEBs are re-used in each election, at any time prior to the election, infecting the demo machine can be used as a vector to attack the entire county voting total.
Since the demo machine is not sealed, its compact flash can be accessed. If the compact flash card is compromised, the system can be quickly owned. From there, the malware can spread rather trivially to the PEB unit used as a secure token by the election workers, and from there to the county's Unity system at Election Central, allowing the entire county's vote to be altered. So instead of the 4,500 machine compromises PA is claiming would be necessary to influence a state election, it would probably only take 6-7 people any time in the past ten years planting their malware in a few key counties.
All one would need to do to untraceably change the vote totals would be walk in to the county election commission, swap the compact flash out for your malware, and leave. If you do this at any point prior to the election, the malware can spread from the demo machine, to a live voting machine, and finally, when the compact flash cards are entered into the Unity system for final tally, the malware can compromise the whole lot. Then the malware would self-delete, leaving no reliable paper audit record.
Interestingly, from a legal perspective, the Secretary of the Commonwealth's certification for these machines is contingent upon the locking mechanism preventing access to the compact flash card. The machine that I saw, the most common model in use in the state, physically could not be secured that way. The plastic cover mechanism to which the lock is affixed simply doesn't cover the flash card slot well enough.
Under the PA election code, if a specific requirement of the Secretary's certification is not met, the law would invalidate the votes cast through all the iVotronics as a matter of law. As the machines were not configured as approved, they aren't approved for casting ballots, which would throw the PA recount into chaos. It's probably the only judicial avenue left to sue for a state-wide recount that might actually have a chance of being considered.
Nobody tell Jill Stein. In all liklihood, the PA legislature would just send the current electors anyway, as is their prerogative.