Pennsylvania's Voting Machines Are Running Windows XP (cbsnews.com)

Slashdot reader rmurph04 writes: As reported by CBS News, the battleground state of Pennsylvania might as well have a target on its back as Election Day nears, the cybersecurity company Carbon Black warned in a new report released Thursday. Across the state, most Pennsylvania counties use particularly high-risk electronic voting machines that leave behind zero paper trails, which could be useful to audit the integrity of votes cast. In addition, many of these machines -- called "direct-recording electronic" machines -- are running on severely outdated operating systems like Windows XP, which has not been patched by Microsoft since 2014.

According to the survey more than one in five registered U.S. voters may stay home on Election Day because of fears about cybersecurity and vote tampering. Respondents believe a U.S. insider threat poses the most risk (28%), followed by Russian hackers (17%) and then the candidates themselves (15%).

Comments

Desktop XP or XP POS

[lister king of smeg]

Are they running the POS or embeded that are still getting updates? Just saying XP isn't exactly helpful.

Why OS?

[ChrisMaple]

Voting machines should be open-source coded in assembly language to run directly on the hardware, and the hardware should be open source - something like a clean-room recreation of a 6502 or Z80. Every gate, every mask, should be verified by hand against the schematics, and every machine code in ROM disassembled by hand and compared against the source listings.

Nothing in the voting mechanisms should be capable of being hidden, nor should it be so complex that one person can't understand and verify the whole thing in a reasonable time, say 1 year.

That means no OS, no proprietary hardware or software, nothing but obvious routines running on "metal".

Re:Stay at home, they may try rigging the election

[Anonymous Coward]

What a dumb thought process. ... Who's brain works like this?

The same idiots who gave us a choice between Ms. repulsive and Mr. truly scary.

What's "truly scary" about Trump? The press will do it's job if Trump wins, and keep him honest.

Crooked Liar Hillary! is the truly scary one - the press has already completely abdicated it's role in keeping Crooked Liar HIllary! honest.

The press is so fawning over Crooked Liar Hillary! that she's allowed to get away with lying over and over again about commiting multiple felonies with her mishandling of classified data that "never existed" on a personal server that also "never existed".

"They weren't marked classified!" is an ACCEPTABLE EXCUSE for someone claiming to be qualified to be President?

The press has let Crooked Liar Hillary! get away with claiming "I'M TOO STUPID AND/OR INMCOMPETENT TO RECOGNIZE CLASSIFIED DATA, AND YOU'RE SEXIST!" as her excuse.

And that's just ONE thing Crooked Liar Hillary! has been DOCUMENTED to have PROVABLY LIED about.

Crooked Liar Hiilary! was NOT named after Sir Edmund Hilary - she was born six years before he climbed Everest.

Crooked Liar Hillary! was NOT shot at in Bosnia.

Crooked Liar Hillary! NEVER opposed the Trans Pacific Partnership - as Secretary of State she was one of its biggest boosters

And the press has let Crooked Liar Hillary! get away with all that - confirming that she's de facto above the law.

Please - tell us whats' more dangerous than a thoroughly corrupt, arrogant, sheltered, self-entitled 1%-er who's demonstrably above the law and who's demonstrably at the very least given the appearance of selling access and decisions affecting national interest for personal gain?

Because that's what's TRULY SCARY: Crooked Liar Hillary! selling out actual US national security and its citizens safety for personal gain. AND YOU KNOW SHE'S LIKELY TO DO IT, you just too fucking partisan to care.

Do you really think if Crooked Liar Hillary! had the choice between making $100 million for herself and her cronies, and enacting policies that would save 10,000 lives a year from starvation or death by war in Syria or Libya, Crooked Liar Hillary! would actually turn down the money? Yeah, YOU KNOW SHE'D TAKE THE MONEY AND LET THE PEOPLE DIE.

You fucking know.

But again, you're too fucking partisan to care.

They sure don't want me to vote in Texas

[shanen]

It's possible I'll get to vote anyway, but they rejected my ballot application the first time with several BS reasons (selected from a long list on the rejection form). Over the last few elections, it has been getting harder and harder to vote, and this latest voter-ID bogosity makes it much more difficult. And stupid.

The hilarious part is that my vote had already been rendered meaningless by the partisan gerrymandering and double-gerrymandering. My so-called Representative is such a worthless tool that they had to rejigger his district to keep it "safe". They are running out of room in the sacrificial districts where they pack in and waste the Democratic votes. They can't draw the district boundaries house by house! Or can they?

I sure hope it's worse than that from the dictators' perspective. The so-called Republicans (really former Dixiecrats "betrayed" by LBJ) have been driving Texas to the bottom so hard and making the state so cheap that a lot of damn Yankees have moved south. Maybe they are about to flip the state back to the Dems, even though the polls have trouble tracking and accounting for first-time-in-district voters. No evidence, but "some people are saying", as the Donald says.

(Also hurts them that Trump is killing the Hispanic vote. This latest insane TwitterWar is NOT the temperament of a potentially great president. If she would have just given him the damn blowjob as payback for maker her a winner, then none of this would have happened!)