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Security of Electronic Pollbooks

READ-ONLY SITE MATERIALS: Historical voting TWiki site (2015-2020) ARCHIVED from https://collaborate.nist.gov/voting/bin/view/Voting

This topic is for discussions of security-related issues associated with the Electronic Pollbooks Use Case

 

Security of Electronic Pollbooks image 01

Security Considerations

Information Types:

  • Names and addresses of voters
  • Mapping to precincts and ballot styles

Security Objectives and Impact Levels

  • Confidentiality: Moderate
  • Integrity: Moderate
  • Availability: Moderate

Notes:

  • Scenarios include:
    • Standalone electronic pollbooks
    • Networked electronic pollbooks
  • ePollbooks store personally-identifiable information, some of which may be sensitive.
  • Loss of availability or integrity of the ePollbook system or data could be highly disurptive.
    • Provisional ballots provide a fallback option in the event of a failure, but the time and effort required to process provisional ballots is significant.
  • ePollbooks may be networked to a VRDB, either in real-time or at regular intervals.

VVSG Security Gap Analysis

Applicability of the VVSG 1.1 and/or draft VVSG 2.0

  • VVSG 1.1: Covered for ballot activation only. Ref: VVSG1.1-Volume 1- 2.3.1, 2.3.2
  • VVSG 2.0: Covered for ballot activation only. Ref: VVSG2- Part 1- 1.1.4, 7.5

Estimated Level-of-Effort to Address

  • General security guidelines would broadly apply to ePollbooks
  • Minimal changes required to support standalone ePollbooks
  • Moderate changes required to support networked ePollbooks

Gap Areas

  • Telecommunications requirements for networked ePollbooks
  • Need to re-evaluate wireless security requirements (VVSG1.1-7.7, generally prohibited by VVSG 2.0)
  • Potential overlap/links to Vrdb Security
     

Voting TWiki Archive (2015-2020): read-only, archived wiki site, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)


ARCHIVE SITE DESCRIPTION AND DISCLAIMER

This page, and related pages, represent archived materials (pages, documents, links, and content) that were produced and/or provided by members of public working groups engaged in collaborative activities to support the development of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0. These TWiki activities began in 2015 and continued until early 2020. During that time period, this content was hosted on a Voting TWiki site. That TWiki site was decommissioned in 2020 due to technology migration needs. The TWiki activities that generated this content ceased to operate actively through the TWiki at the time the draft VVSG 2.0 was released, in February of 2020. The historical pages and documents produced there have been archived now in read-only, static form.

  • The archived materials of this TWiki (including pages, documents, links, content) are provided for historical purposes only.
  • They are not actively maintained.
  • They are provided "as is" as a public service.
  • They represent the "work in progress" efforts of a community of volunteer members of public working groups collaborating from late 2015 to February of 2020.
  • These archived materials do not necessarily represent official or peer-reviewed NIST documents nor do they necessarily represent official views or statements of NIST.
  • Unless otherwise stated these materials should be treated as historical, pre-decisional, artifacts of public working group activities only.
  • NIST MAKES NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND DATA ACCURACY.
  • NIST does not warrant or make any representations regarding the correctness, accuracy, reliability or usefulness of the archived materials.

ARCHIVED VOTING TWIKI SITE MATERIALS

This wiki was a collaborative website. NIST does not necessarily endorse the views expressed, or concur with the facts presented on these archived TWiki materials. Further, NIST does not endorse any commercial products that may be mentioned in these materials. Archived material on this TWiki site is made available to interested parties for informational and research purposes. Materials were contributed by Participants with the understanding that all contributed material would be publicly available.  Contributions were made by Participants with the understanding that that no copyright or patent right shall be deemed to have been waived by such contribution or disclosure. Any data or information provided is for illustrative purposes only, and does not imply a validation of results by NIST. By selecting external links, users of these materials will be leaving NIST webspace. Links to other websites were provided because they may have information that would be of interest to readers of this TWiki. No inferences should be drawn on account of other sites being referenced, or not referenced, from this page or these materials. There may be other websites or references that are more appropriate for a particular reader's purpose.

 

Created August 28, 2020, Updated February 5, 2021