Virginia Ditches 'America's Worst Voting Machines'

Geoffrey.landis writes: Computerized voting machines are bad news in general, but the WINVote machines used in Virginia might just have earned their reputation as the most insecure voting machine in America. They feature Wi-Fi that can't be turned off (protected, however, with a WEP password of "abcde"), an unencrypted database, and administrative access with a hardcoded password of "admin." According to security researcher Jeremy Epstein, if the machines weren't hacked in past elections, "it was because nobody tried." But with no paper trail, we'll never know.

Well, after ignoring the well-documented problems for over a decade, Virginia finally decided to decommission the machines... after the governor had problems with the machines last election and demanded an investigation. Quoting: "In total, the vulnerabilities investigators found were so severe and so trivial to exploit, Epstein noted that 'anyone with even a modicum of training could have succeeded' in hacking them. An attacker wouldn't have needed to be inside a polling place either to subvert an election... someone 'within a half mile with a rudimentary antenna built using a Pringles can could also have attacked them.'"

Comments

Re:Meet the new guy

[DaHat]

It's not the asking to see a photo id - it is the specific methods of photo ID that is racist.

So it's racist towards a white college student in Texas who happens to have an out of state drivers license? I knew the racists were a bit crazy, but what you describe is just nonsense!

But the 'voter id laws' of states like Texas a) don't let you vote at all,

Wait... what?

b) make it illegal to use state funded college ID or an out-of-state Driver License to prove your identity even if you happen to be a College Student living in Texas for 9 months of a year - and therefore have the legal right to vote,

Yup, there tend to be different requirements for IDs depending on what you want to do and where. A few years back a friend was visiting me in Washington from Kansas who had lost her drivers license before the trip so got a temporary one... which was simply a printed piece of receipt paper. Oddly enough, it was enough to get past TSA and onto the airplane... but not enough to get into a bar.

Racism!

c) make it very difficult to prove your ID and COSTLY in both time and energy.

You should try getting a concealed carry permit in some states, its far more complicated & costly then getting an instate ID to vote in most (if not all) states. There exists an explicit right to keep and bare arms... yet I now have my fingerprints permanently on file in 3x states in order to exercise it and I've never even been arrested (let alone convicted) of a crime.

Racism!

It's not the concept of a voter ID law that sucks, it is the intentional attempt to create a system designed to stop liberals from voting.

So... liberals are too lazy/stupid/poor to be able to meet such requirements? Interesting.

Using a false claim that you are just trying to stop non-existent fraud does not explain why they pull crap like this.

Guess what... I care about preventing liberal voter fraud the same way I care about preventing conservative, green or purple voter fraud, equally!