Voatz confirms that on October 25, 2018, there was an unsuccessful attempt to gain entry into the Voatz system during the West Virginia mobile voting pilot for the 2018 U.S. Federal Midterm Election. The attempt was detected, blocked and reported in detail to the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office. We want to re-emphasize that this attempt targeted our live system and not our replica system made available to researchers as part of our Bug Bounty program.
While probes into IT systems and general infrastructure across the nation are fairly common, as of January 2017, the Department of Homeland Security designated election infrastructure as part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, a section under DHS’s Government Facilities Sector. As a result, any attempts to tamper with or break into a live election system are illegal.
Voatz continues to remain vigilant and committed to following industry standard best practices around information security, and partnering with jurisdiction and law enforcement officials to ensure that our election infrastructure remains protected. Voatz is duty bound to continue to report any attempts to breach or tamper with the live system to our clients. Please note that any action taken subsequently by our clients is outside our purview.