Hacker Exposes Florida's Voting Database — Again

Dangerous_Minds writes "A hacker that goes by the name of Abhaxas exposed parts of the Florida voting database. That apparently didn't sit well with election officials. Reportedly, officials said that authorities were contacted and that their databases are now more secure than ever. In turn, Abhaxas decided to hack the database again and reveal a file directory. Said Abhaxas in the posting, 'Glad you cleaned things up, pretty secure now guys.'"

Comments

pen and paper

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing beats it.get back to the way things were done , by hand , and say goodbye to cracked databases.
i lived in FL and it's the worst place for voting.We should all pressure FL to go back to good old hand counting and manual
voter list generation
We do it in Canuckia without trouble , dont tell me FL can't do it.

Re:pen and paper

[Gideon Wells]

Pen and Paper is not anymore secure. Just a false sense of security and nostalgia. There have been reports in some states of boxs of voting slips just appearing after an election.

I'm still a fan of the dual system. Computerized voting with a paper printout for auditing purposes. The voter can double check this. Possibly have a random X% of precincts have a mandatory paper printout manual count to check against the computer for possible errors.

Re:pen and paper

[WaywardGeek]

No! Those of us who don't live in Florida love all the comedy. You would ruin it for the rest of us.

Re:pen and paper

[LurkerXXX]

Certainly it's more secure. You need to move around big boxes full of paper, and you need to do that at a lot of locations to affect a state or national election. Lots of people involved. Lots of not so subtle activity. Lots and lots of chances to get caught.

With electronic voting, you need at most one person per state, and at the most obvious, carrying a tiny device in their pocket going into a voting booth. That's if they can't do it all remotely from the comfort of their office chair. Many many less people involved, and with a heck of a lot less obvious activity. Very little chance of getting caught compared to paper changing.

secure? oh really?

[spokenoise]

all your votes are belong to us!

They are telling the truth, the system is secure

[SmallFurryCreature]

The voting system in Florida is 100% secure, they absolutely positively guarantee that there is ZERO chance of ANY voter being able to affect the predetermined outcome sold to the highest bidder.

Oh yeah thought they were trying to ensure the voters choice was not tampered with? What a silly idea.

The other side of the coin

[Anonymous Coward]

Most if not all of you will have heard something along the following lines...
"I'm getting infected by a lot of viruses since you've installed an antivirus on my PC. I'm worried, how can I solve this problem?"

How do you think these kind of people react to the recent hacking activities? I myself consider them to be at least a necessary evil, but the average Joe's mind will scream... these hackers are making our system unsecure, make them go away!

The hackers are not making the system unsecure Joe - the system was unsecure to begin with. You're just being uncomfortable with the truth.

Re:The other side of the coin

[WaywardGeek]

Right on. The government should offer rewards for hacks like this, in any critical system: voting databases, military secrets, IRS database, etc. It would be the equivalent of the whistle-blower law we passed to reward people who expose fraud in government contracts. Just require the hackers to make public enough to prove they have accessed sensitive data, but not enough to compromise important systems. State how they did the hack in secret communication, and get money from the US government, as bitcoins through the Tor network. Allow the hackers to collect the reward over and over once a month until the system is secure.

Imagine how awesome such a program would be for exposing which important secrets have been compromised? With say a $100K reward to any worker anywhere who can prove they have access to critical US "secrets", we'd learn a ton about what systems are secure and which aren't. That's the kind of information that wins or loses wars.

Re:is Abhaxas a bad movie reference?

[Ozeroc]

Probably the Sanata album: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraxas_(album)

Re:is Abhaxas a bad movie reference?

[kvezach]

It could be a general Gnostic reference. Abraxas is also a Marvel Comics character.

why online?

[perryizgr8]

why is any computer holding the voting db even online? why do you need internet access? what is the problem with using an offline db and syncing the voting machines or something?

Re:secure? oh really?

[Robert Zenz]

They probably were...but the bastard slipped through the intertubes!

Root

[TheSpoom]

Anyone notice he posted the file listing as root?

Also, cleartext passwords in the database, all using the same format. For shame.