DHS official wants to see secret voting cybersecurity report that's been fueling right-wing conspiracies

A cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security wants to see a report on Georgia's voting machines that a judge has ordered sealed -- which has fueled right-wing conspiracy theories about election fraud.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ordered the report by a computer security expert to remain sealed to avoid fueling election conspiracies -- but her order has backfired, reported The Daily Beast.

"But now the Streisand effect is in full swing, as the report's secrecy is attracting even more attention from two camps: the federal agency tasked with helping protect elections and state election officials around the country who are also relying on these machines in certain jurisdictions," the website reported.

The report's author, University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman, contacted Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency after The Daily Beast first reported on Totenberg's order, and Geoffrey Hale, who heads the agency's "Election Security Initiative" indicated he would like to review the findings.

Hale said CISA would like to perform its own analysis of the vulnerabilities Halderman found in the Dominion ICX voting machines used in Georgia and in parts of other states, and he said any flaws found by the government would be disclosed to elections officials and the manufacturer.

Halderman has filed a copy of his email correspondence with CISA officials in federal court before Totenberg, whom he's asked to unseal his report.

"Continuing to withhold my report from CISA puts voters and election outcomes in numerous states at unnecessary, and avoidable, risk," Halderman wrote last week in the filing.

Three sources familiar with the 25,000-word report's contents say Halderman identified how a single hacker could easily infect private voting booths, although he does not allege that anyone broke into any of those machines or affected any votes during an election.

Halderman has alleged in court filings the machines he analyzed "suffer from specific, highly exploitable vulnerabilities that allow attackers to change votes despite the state's purported defenses," and his most recent letter revealed that neither Georgia's elections officials and Dominion have yet to even read his sealed report.

"The state is doing nothing to address these issues," said attorney David Cross, who represents election integrity groups around the country. "My guess is, they don't want to know. Dominion is the same way, because if it knows, then it's got disclosure requirements in every state that uses their equipment. They don't want CISA to get it, because CISA is going to say, 'Jesus, this is a serious problem.'"