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Hardware Hacking a Voting Machine in 4 Minutes
goombah99 writes "Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org has acquired an actual Diebold Acu-vote ballot scanner. Rummaging through King County's trash, she managed to get her hands on some of their tags and seals. She has since demonstrated a successful penetration of the seals without breaking them ... all in under 4 minutes with no training or technical skills required. There's a nice how-to with photos over at Verified Voting New Mexico." More from goombah99 below.
"The demo is particularly relevant in light of the recent experience in Ohio in which there were large discrepancies between the electronic record and the paper trail, and also since many counties still permit the machines to be taken home by individuals before voting day (as a means of distributing them to precincts). These 'sleepover' machines were involved in the contentious narrow-margin San Diego Election, and are in continued practice in many states. Moreover, it's common practice for counties to contract out deliveries to third parties, such as in New Mexico where in one election, unlicensed delivery drivers took the machines on an unauthorized field trip and only got caught when they crashed the delivery truck after a stop at Hooters. The good news here is that the penetrated Diebold system in the photo essay is an optical scan system. It's not a touchscreen electronic voting system, so there is a paper trail. What hack really shows is that without mandatory random spot checks on the paper ballots, these may be as potentially vulnerable as the touchscreen direct recording electronic voting systems. It's perhaps worth noting that the open source voting system being developed by the Open Voting Consortium features a 100% reconciliation of every single paper ballot with an independent electronic record."
A couple of untrained 54-year old women from Black Box Voting bought $12 worth of tools and in four minutes penetrated the memory card seals, removed, replaced the memory card, and sealed it all up again without leaving a trace.
/sarc
54 years old AND women.
I don't see why there's not more outrage about this.
Well, if you are lucky, only about a third of the people eligible to vote actually do vote. Of those, half probably click on the "Democrat" or "Republican" button. Of the remaining few, most don't understand the concept of "electronic" voting. They couldn't figure out the paper ballots in Florida - now you are throwing an electronic screen at them!? So, they definately don't have any way to wrap their brain around hacking an electronic voting machine. Of the handful of people that do understand it all, most either work for the companies that make the gadgets (including the government people who support it) or they are wack-jobs that have been complaining about conspiracy theories for so long that just saying "Electronic voting booths can be hacked" comes out as "Aliens from Roswell are doing Elvis' bidding by hacking the voting booths with E-ray mind control devices to force people to vote for Reagan!!!"
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
"Do you want me to suffer for my political views?"
I am trying to see where I said I want you to suffer for your political views
Perhaps you could point out to the place where I said that.
Needless to say besides your sophistry, I was simply pointing out you are always going to have these kinds of problems in a closed balloting system but one where you go before a comittee and verify your vote while the tapes are rolling can be simply verified by anyone, we could even stream it over the internet
Again, not to advocate open voting, but to simply point out the problems you stated aren't really all that bac. You can get another job with someone who doesn't care who you vote for, as oppossed to working for some bastard you don't like. And if your friends or family know who you voted for, and you can't look them in the face afterwards and defend your position, maybe just maybe you voted the wrong way.
I would also like to point out, this was how democracy used to be. Every citizen stood up in a crowded hall or outside depending on where you were, and your name was called from a roster and you stated vote in front of everyone. It used to be a day for celebration and parting as the various poltical parties would bring out tons of alchool and food.
So the question really What bothers you more, an Unelected Government who stole power from the people, or everyone knowing who you voted for?
then every other political issue is quite literally irrelevant.
Actually, it makes the right to bear arms very relevant.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!