Hackers find only minor issues with Swiss Post’s e-voting system
For certain groups, including Swiss citizens living abroad, e-voting is an important issue.
Keystone / Gian Ehrenzeller
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: Hackers find only minor issues with Swiss Post’s e-voting system
A recent public test of the Swiss Post’s electronic voting system, involving 7,000 ethical hackers from around the world, found four reported vulnerabilities, of which only one – of “low severity” – was confirmed.
Swiss Post said on Thursday that during the test period, which ran from June 17 to July 3, attacks were registered from 6,923 IP addresses from 62 countries.
The aim of the test, which was run under the same conditions which are used for real elections and votes, was to uncover possible security flaws.
Only one vulnerability (of “low” degree, on a scale also including “medium”, “high” and “critical”) was found, Swiss Post said. It was not a security-relevant issue, but rather a suggestion to improve communication between servers to prevent simultaneous searches. Swiss Post has already updated its software accordingly.
The hacker who uncovered the flaw pocketed a prize of CHF4,500 ($5,242) – CHF1,500 for the notification plus a CHF3,000 bonus for being the first to report it.
The prize money however amounted to a meagre haul compared to what would have been awarded to anyone who managed to breach the system seriously: a discovery of critical vulnerabilities would have meant a booty of CHF50,000, while managing to manipulate the electronic ballot without leaving a trace would have meant CHF250,000.
Adapted from Italian by DeepL/dos
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Life & Aging
Zurich: how the world capital of housing shortages is tackling the problem
Is your place of origin, your Heimatort, important to you?
Every Swiss citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin, but many have never visited theirs. What’s your relationship with your Heimatort? What does it mean to you?
In Switzerland more people are being referred to electrical therapies or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Are there similar approaches where you live?
Pope was a person full of respect: Swiss president
This content was published on
Swiss president Karin Keller-Sutter, who is attending the funeral of Pope Francis, says the pontiff was always full of respect.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.