TerraSwarm PI Alex Halderman Uncovers Security Flaw in New South Wales (NSW) Internet voting system iVote

Prior to the launch of the New South Wales (NSW) online voting system, iVote, TerraSwarm PI Alex Halderman (Professor, Univ. of Michigan) and collaborator Vanessa Teague warned that the system had not sufficiently addressed potential security concerns. Despite repeated assurances from the Electoral Commission that all Internet votes are 'fully encrypted and safeguarded,' six days into online voting, Halderman and Teague discovered a FREAK flaw that could allow an attacker to intercept votes and inject their own code to change those votes, all without leaving any trace of the manipulation. (FREAK stands for Factoring RSA Export Keys and refers to the exploitation of a weakness in the SSL/TLS protocol that allows attackers to force browsers to use weak encryption keys.)

The NSW Electoral Commission admitted that there was a FREAK flaw with iVote and scrambled to promptly patch it. 

To read more, go to the following links:

• Electronic Frontier Foundation: New South Wales Attacks Researchers Who Found Internet Voting Vulnerabilities 
• CITP Freedom to Tinker: Security Flaw in New South Wales puts Thousands of Online Votes at Risk 

TerraSwarm Researchers at the University of Michigan Develop "World's Smallest Computer"

TerraSwarm PIs David Blaauw and Prabal Dutta and others at the University of Michigan were in the news recently for their development of the 'Michigan Micro Mote' (M^3), the world’s smallest autonomous computer measuring only two millimeters across. These tiny computers, each as small as a grain of rice, are the first complete, operational computer systems of this size.  Prof. Blaauw explains:

“To be 'complete,' a computer system must have an input of data, the ability to process that data - meaning process and store it, make decisions about what to do next – and ultimately, the ability to output the data.The sensors are the input and the radios are the output. The other key to being a complete computer is the ability to supply its own power.”

The Michigan Micro Motes have the ability to work as smart sensing systems and perform functions such as taking pictures, reading temperatures or recording pressure readings and then transmitting this data back to the base station. The range of possible applications are vast, spanning medical to industrial uses.

According to Blaauw, one of the keys in developing the Micro Mote was scaling down the battery size, which is often one of the largest components of a computer. This was done by designing it to be programmed and charged via light.  By strobing light at a high frequency, the operator sends information to the computer. After processing the data, the Micro Mote is able to send the information to a central computer via conventional radio frequencies.

For more information about the Michigan Micro Motes and their possible applications, go to the news links below:

• CBS News: This is the World's Smallest Computer
• I4U News: Rice-Grain Size Michigan Micro Mote is the World's Smallest Computer 
• EECS University of Michigan: Michigan Micro Mote makes History
• Video: https://youtu.be/vh8xtl1yq-0

NIST Report Warns IoT Could be Stalled by Timing Systems

TerraSwarm Director Edward Lee was co-author on the recently-released white paper by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warning that the Internet of Things (IoT) could be stalled by our lack of effective methods to marry computers and networks with timing systems.

According to NIST Tech Beat article “Lack of EffectiveTiming Signals Could Hamper ‘Internet of Things’ Development”, authors of the white paper are concerned with the way most modern data systems are designed to process and exchange data with one another and what that could mean for a world of discrete processors and mechanical devices linked by an information network.  Many of the new applications proposed, such as driverless cars and smart grids, will depend on precision timing in computers and networks, yet modern computer programs only have probabilities on execution times, rather than the strong certainties necessary for safety-critical systems.

The report reviews the state of the art in several areas central to the use of timing signals and recommends crosscutting research to improve current technology, including clock design, the use of timing in networking systems, hardware and software architecture, and application design.

Go to “Lack of Effective Timing Signals Could Hamper ‘Internet of Things’Development” http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/timing-031915.cfm to read more about the recently released white paper.

To read the white paper report in its entirety, go to: M. Weiss, J. Eidson, C.Barry, D. Broman, L. Goldin, B. Iannucci, E.A. Lee and K. Stanton. Time-AwareApplications, Computers, and Communication Systems (TAACCS). NISTTech Note 1867, Feb. 21, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1867.

The Swarm Box: A New Prototype from TerraSwarm

In an interview with Semiconductor Engineering, TerraSwarm Director Edward Lee showed off their new Swarm Box prototype. The Swarm Box, part of a new class of IoT devices termed immobiles, allows the network to have compute capabilities much closer to the physical devices it’s integrating with, increasing reliability and quality of service.  See TerraSwarm’s Swarm Box and hear the interview at “Tech Talk: Swarm Boxes”: http://semiengineering.com/tech-talk-swarm-boxes/.

TerraSwarm Faculty Vijay Kumar appointed Dean of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania

Professor Vijay Kumar has been appointed Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania.

Professor Kumar is a TerraSwarm faculty member whose work focuses on quad rotor aircraft.

For further information, see Susan Snyder's blog item "New Engineering dean at Penn."

TerraSwarm PI Alex Halderman Weighs in on the Future of Online Voting

TerraSwarm PI Alex Halderman was recently interviewed on AM Australia, regarding the future of online voting.

An electronic voting system called iVote has recently been implemented in New South Wales, Australia, to give those with low vision, blindness or a disability an alternative way to vote. It’s currently only available to those who are unable to vote in person on election day:  those people living more than 20 km from a polling place or those travelling outside of the electorate.

A researcher in Australia is assessing the feasibility of opening up mobile voting to the rest of the Australian population, not just to those with special circumstances.  They are looking at other countries, including Estonia, that have implemented online voting.

Alex Halderman, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, was part of a team of international security experts that evaluated the Estonian system. They found it could be breached. AM Australia interviewed him about his research.

Halderman is quoted in the interview:

Quite surprisingly to me, it would be extremely easy for a foreign power to compromise Estonia's system to hack into the system and either alter the results of an election or, short of that, just cause the election to fail and be discredited. 

In my view it's going to be perhaps a decade - if ever - before we're able to secure internet voting against these powerful threats. And for now the absolute safest course of action is not to vote online at all or, at least, to limit as much as possible the number of votes that are cast with online systems.

To read more from the ABC News Australia interview, reported by Alice Matthews, go to: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2015/s4184471.htm

  

TerraSwarm PI Alex Halderman Selected for Sloan Research Fellowship

TerraSwarm PI Alex Halderman was selected for a Sloan Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for his work in the science of computer and network security with an emphasis on problems that broadly impact society and public policy.  His research interests span software security, network security, data privacy, anonymity, electronic voting, censorship resistance, digital rights management, computer forensics, ethics, and cybercrime, as well as the interaction of technology with law, governmental regulation, and international affairs.  

To read more about Professor Halderman’s research and this award, go to the University of Michigan CSE news announcement: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/about/articles/2015/Halderman-Sloan.html

Halderman was one of two University of Michigan professors and TerraSwarm PIs awarded the prestigious Sloan Fellowship in 2015. His colleague, Prabal Dutta, was also selected: http://www.eecs.umich.edu/eecs/about/articles/2015/Dutta-Sloan.html

Sloan Research Fellowships honor early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars.  These two-year fellowships are awarded to 126 researchers in the US and Canada annually.