It's Not Safe Yet: Online Voting in Practice
Michael Specter
Voting Village @ DEF CON 33 · Day 1 · Voting Village
In "It's Not Safe Yet: Online Voting in Practice," Michael Specter, an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech, presents a critical security analysis of internet voting systems that were actually deployed in high-stakes U.S. federal elections. Drawing from his extensive research conducted during his PhD at MIT, Specter meticulously dissects the vulnerabilities and inherent flaws in two prominent systems: Votes, a mobile application, and Democracy Live, a web-based platform. The talk not only exposes severe technical shortcomings but also delves into the broader socio-technical and policy challenges that plague the adoption and secure implementation of online voting.
AI review
Specter brings documented, peer-reviewed security research on actually-deployed federal election systems — not hypotheticals, not lab toys. The ciphertext length side-channel, the Zmpirium bypass, and the custom crypto trainwreck in Votes are concrete original findings with real policy consequences. This is the Voting Village doing what it's supposed to do.