Month: September 2020

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For a feature last week, I talked to a number of election experts and computer security researchers who argued that secure Internet voting isn't feasible today and probably won't be for many years to come. A common response to this argument—one that came up in comments to last week's article—is to compare voting to banking. After all, we regularly use the Internet to move money around the world. Why can't we use the same techniques to secure online votes?

But voting has some unique requirements that make secure online voting a particularly challenging problem.

Votes are anonymous, banking isn’t

Every electronic transaction in the conventional banking system is tied to a specific sender and recipient who can confirm that a transaction is valid or raise the alarm if it isn't. Banks count on customers to periodically review their transactions—either online or in paper statements—and notify the bank if fraudulent transactions occur.

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They’re back—attacks that use booby-trapped Web ads to install malware on the computers of unsuspecting visitors.

So-called malvertising works by paying advertising networks to display banner ads on legitimate websites. Malicious code snuck into the ads then surreptitiously exploits vulnerabilities in browsers or browser plugins. The result: merely browsing to the wrong site infects vulnerable computers with malware that steals banking credentials, logs passwords, or spies on users.

Malvertising never went away, but it did become much less common in the past few years. Thanks to dramatic improvements in browser security, malvertising was replaced by more effective infection techniques, such as phishing, malicious macros in Microsoft Office documents, and tricking targets into installing malicious apps that masquerade as legitimate software.

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With just over 50 days to go before the 2020 US presidential election, everything is—predictably—hitting the fan. Foreign interference is of course an ever present threat, with known actors both attempting to amplify social discord as well as literally hack campaigns. But good old homegrown deliberate misinformation is also a significant threat to this year's entire electoral process.

Misinformation spreads rapidly thanks to the advent of social media—especially Facebook, Google, and Twitter. Facebook already announced its (weak) plan for combating rampant falsehoods, and this week Twitter and Google both made their plans public as well.

Tweet, tweet...

Twitter's existing policy prohibits users from posting content that includes "false claims on how to participate in civic processes" or "content that could intimidate or suppress participation." In other words, at a very high level you're not allowed to use Twitter to lie about voting or tell people not to vote.

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Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

Since it was first published in 2009, the hyper-competitive family strategy game Small World has become a perennial tabletop favorite. Ironically, given its name, its success has caused its fantasy realm to grow over the years, with a steady stream of expansions introducing new factions to command and new regions to explore. Now, though, the game has shifted to an entirely new setting with Small World of Warcraft, a standalone game set in WoW's orc-infested land of Azeroth.

For the uninitiated, the original Small World has players control rival factions, all competing to seize territory and expand their empires. While it’s a premise shared by countless "dudes-on-a-map" strategy games, Small World's unpredictable take on the concept comes with a handful of twists that help it stand out from the crowd.